Into The Wild

June 14, 2008

On the advice from a friend, I just finished watching Into the Wild. I highly recommend it.

Into the Wild is a 2007 film adapted by Sean Penn from Jon Krakauer’s bestselling non-fiction book of the same name. The story chronicles the life of 1990 Emory University graduate Christopher McCandless, who left his home and family and everything he knew to travel the U.S. en route to the Alaskan wilderness.

This isn’t a book report, and as such, I won’t recap the story. That can be done by googling the title. My intent here is simply to give my thoughts and share my take on the story.

I can identify with McCandless. I fell in love with his free-spirited adventures. I’m fascinated with all the interesting people he met and the new and different things did. He experienced things he likely would have never gotten to experience, had he gone to Harvard Law; such as, leatherworking, running a combine, or kayaking the Colorado. I’m captivated by the places he got to see, just being out completely on his own, going where the wind took him.

In general though, the movie reminded me of my family, and specifically my brother Tim. Not that our family had a million-dollar consulting business whose parents gladly offered to buy a new car or pay for a Harvard Law education. Neither Joe nor I could imagine what it would be like to have parents with that kind of money.

But I'm afraid the family drama of the parents fighting and the kids having to deal with the confusion and finding out their parents' marriage wasn't exactly a fairy tale didn't have much of an impression on me. That was pretty much daily life for my siblings and me.

Even McCandless' sister saying, "I haven't heard from my brother in 3 months..." didn’t faze me. I was like, yeah, get over it, I didn't hear from my brother for 7 years. And then the parents going crazy wondering where he was and trying to find him and the mom imagining every guy on the street was her son... that is probably not much different than what my mother has felt ever since we lost touch with Tim.

I felt as if the parents were all about money and show, and couldn't cope with their son marring their "perfect" family image. They sure had a hard time letting go, letting him be his own self and live his own life. Then again, it would have been nice if he'd at least left a note or something. The least he could do was to send a postcard now & again -- but then, McCandless was like Tim, wasn't he. He didn't want to be found.

That brings me to one thing I've come to appreciate about my parents: their "laissez-faire" approach to parenting. Sure, it would have been nice to have had a little support and direction from them; but on the other hand, we didn't live with the pressure of living up to our parents' expectations and trying to be what they wanted us to be.

The story ended so sadly. I was hoping McCandless would go back home and reconcile with his family. I was left wondering what the moral of the story was, or if there was meant to be one. Maybe it was intended more as a docudrama.

Into The Wild has affected me so deeply. The critics have labeled his story “controversial,” but originally, as I watched the movie I didn’t see anything controversial about it. After reading my friend’s email, however, and a few weblinks she sent me, I see what people are arguing about. He was DETERMINED to get away from everything, everyone, and learn on his own as he went.

In many ways I can identify with that – here especially in my old age I sometimes dream of living in a cabin in the woods and literally living off the land. I dream of getting away from commercialism, materialism, some of the same “poisons” of society that McCandless spoke of.

It’s so true, though, what the critics say – he was unprepared. He was very intelligent, there’s no question, but he was more of a dreamer, wasn’t he, gleaning his “wisdom” from all those books he read. Nothing wrong with reading fiction, but you’ve got to know where the fiction ends and reality begins.

He appeared to have little or no experience with the wilderness at all, and looking at his family background, one of money and a materially charmed life, that’s not surprising. I wonder if they ever even went camping. Once.

And so when I think of Tim, that this sounds like something he would do, I know that at least he has the “outdoor” skills. He can fish, hunt, and probably start a fire out of sticks and stone. I believe he even knows how to make homemade jerky. I think either he or my dad could survive alone in the wilderness with no problem.

Anyway, back to McCandless. It seems that with as much hiking around he would have had to do, looking for food and such, he would have easily found the tram they spoke of, to cross the river. Or maybe he was just too delirious by that time to do much reasonable thinking.

I thought the movie could have pointed out what effects (positive or negative) he had on the people he met. Did he change their lives? Their thinking? Their outlooks? That’s not what director Chris Penn set out to show. But, it may have given McCandless' life more meaning, more of a human element to the story.

I was so sad that Christopher McCandless died. I wanted him to come back and spend his life telling about "the richest experience of his life." Jon Krakauer, though, captures McCandless’ life, and summarizes it in his 1993 Outside Magazine article, “Death of an Innocent.” http://outside.away.com/outside/features/1993/1993_into_the_wild_1.html