Into The Wild -Belated Movie Review

It’s 1:30 in the morning. I’ve had partial insomnia for the past five nights. It sucks. So, in the meantime…

TW brought it up in the comments section in the last post. Into The Wild. A great movie directed by Sean Penn. This one, I highly recommend.

You all should know this story already, but for a quick rundown since for some reason I am starting to feel tired and don’t want to miss the opportunity for sleep, Christopher McCandless left his middle to upper class existence, cutting up all….dude I am falling asleep. I will get back to this later.

What I do want to say, in case I say fuck it to this post, is that you do hear the backlash of sorts over this Chris character. Many a times I have heard (usually conversations resulting out of the book, in which this story was based upon) that he was “an idiot”. Basically some dumb kid, even if book smart, who was inexperienced, arrogant in his approach to self survival, and ended up dying because of the aforementioned. And some further state, “so fuck him”.

One sheep. Two sheep. I’m trying here.

But I tell you before I nod off here. I found the book and movie equally fascinating. I personally did not find Chris (in how he was depicted) to be either dumb, arrogant, or foolish. His death to me was incredibly sad, and yes, it may have been avoidable and unnecessary, but accidental, and to me not the point to what was most gripping about the film.

Dude I am all over the place due to tiredness, but who cares. I’ll shoot this out and go to sleep.

But the theme of the movie, or his driving force appears to be his stance on anti-materialism and living, truly living out amongst nature. Ditching the conformist 9 to 5, suburbia, chained to a desk, stuck in traffic, estranged from community, and family lifestyle and truly living one’s life.

I’m sure I just wrote a jarbled mess there, but what stuck out to me most in the movie, was that this was indeed a special kid, who was very bright and equally pained. Not just a person who read a book or two on Walden, Thoreau, or London and was motivated to live as they did (or wrote about at least). What came off to me, was that this was a deeply sensitive and intelligent kid who was a byproduct (the symptomatic kid) of the verbal abuse shared between his parents, and the eventual revealed damning truths of his parents’ lies and dishonesty about his father’s previous affair that resulted in another family.

As a result Chris withdrew into himself and books and found not only his passion, but more his escape into the wild. He expressed his disgust and total intolerance for dishonesty (very readily implied that this stemmed from dear old daddy’s actions) and it became his driving force during those years to reject all dishonesty and pursue in the toughest, most direct way, what he regarded as truths. And what is more honest and non skewed and filtered than mother nature?

That is where he headed. I feel that his deep seated pain originated from his family’s secret which led to his distaste and rejection of dishonesty and ‘weakness’, which he then applied to his surroundings as he rejected this, that, and the other (such as social shit, schools, colleges, jobs, families, etc.) as if he was assessing what is real and what isn’t.

Anyways, I am going to sleep which again why this is so disjointed here, but anyways, that is how I saw this kid. He was in search of truth and strength with such a drive and intensity that was in equal strength to what he was rejecting and running from. It’s where he challened it for this time period in his life.

Seen towards the end of the film he comes to the conclusion that life is only worth it, or rather the joy of life is truly is at its best when shared with others, was an insight into him realizing that it wasn’t about living a life of solitude. He gained that part in the wild, but again it was all self exploration. That was one of the things he learned.

And I learned that when tired, don’t write. But fuck it. I did it anyways.

Christopher McCandless would have sorted it out. He was only 23 or so when he died. The fact that he was such a man of action simply speaks volumes to his character. Most sit and do nothing. Most don’t even spend much time sorting out their shit. This kid did both, or at least was working/getting to the second half.

Very sad ending. A very tender, moving movie.

Grade A-

BN