For Your Consideration

I wrote this a week or two ago.


Movie Review of Into the Wild. Spoilers follow. Beware!


I recently saw the movie Into the Wild (actually I saw it last night). Let me first start this by saying that Into the Wild was a good movie. The acting was well done, the cinematography was quite stunning, the themes were wholesome without being overbearing over forced. Overall the movie was good. The one huge and glaring flaw of the movie was Chris "Alexander Supertramp" McCandless. This is of course the main character and the character with whom you're supposed to connect with. His attempt to get away from the ills of the world and society, we've experienced the urge to do just the same. He's special because he actually does it. Through him we're supposed to see our own cowardice to become free like him.

It'd be much easier to connect with this character if he wasn't such a selfish, arrogant punk. The first time we see him converse with his family he's belittling their attempts to give him a graduation present. This graduation present being a new car. He sits at dinner and patronizes his family's generosity. Sure, their into material pleasures of which he has no need since he, of course, is no longer of the man made world, but his complete rudeness at his parents attempt at being nice are just sickening. Some may say, he's just being honest, he doesn't want their material pleasures, but there is a difference between being honest and being tactful. He could have said ""Thanks but no thanks mom and dad. I'm just fine with my Datsun, and I think that a new car would just be an attempt at flashy materialism of which I don't want to be a part." But no, his response is "Things, things, things, things!" Thank you philosophical Hulk. That was very poetic.

Oh, poetic? That's another issue for me. In an attempt to bond with him, hippie lady Jan asks him a question to which he responds "I'll paraphrase Thoreau." Thank you, Supertramp. You're quite familiar with poets from long ago and can quote them at will. You are obviously better than the other people who are giving you your food. He could truly care less about the people around them, using them for shelter and food and nothing else.

Oh, sure, he does gain friendships with these people, but it seems that they're more invested in the relationship than he is. He befriends a 16 year old girl who falls in love with him (and at one point bluntly shows him that she wants to have sex with him) and leaves with little more than a hug and the advice that if she wants something in life to "reach out and grab it." I'm sorry Supertramp, but I'm pretty sure she wants you in her life. And why can't you stay there and be the friend that she needs (did I mention he met her in a hippie camp in which there seems to be no one else her age?). Oh, it's because you want to go be by yourself in Alaska.

Alaska. He leaves these people in his life, because he wants to be alone in Alaska. He leaves people who have invested their money, their advice, their love, and their time in him, so he can go be in Alaska. "Alaska, Alaska!"

Oh, hippie lady Jan, you try to be the mother figure he needs, since his mom and dad often had violent fights that were played out in front of Supertramp and his sister. Oh, wait, he has a sister? You wouldn't think so by the selfishness that he displays throughout the movie. But yes, he leaves his sister, who has had to deal with the same violent turbulence that he had to go through at home, with the parents he hates. But of course he writes this sister, who has gone through hell and back not only with the mom and dad but the fact that her brother has gone missing. Oh, he doesn't write his sister? He leaves for two years without so much as a good bye or a "hey I'm going to find myself by being dirt poor." But he does write a guy he knew for a couple months who went to jail. So let me get this straight, he writes to a man he worked for for a couple of months, but he doesn't write to his sister, who he's known for 15 years?

Oh, sure, the movie gives his sister a voice-over explaining that she understands that him not calling or writing is just him escaping not just the family but society. But the fact remains that he left a young girl with a family who he himself hated and doesn't even seem repentent about it.

But in the end, after living in Alaska by himself for over 8 weeks, he goes back home to a family torn with grief, apologizes, and finds all the friends he made over the years he's been a hobo and lives a great life as an author, his first book being about his adventures. Wait, no, he ends up dying alone in the Alaskan wilderness. And what does he do before he dies? Realizes he should be with people, quotes a poem and the kicks the bucket. Quotes a poem.

Even at death's door, he's pretentious.