Into the Wild

I just saw this 2007 film and it moved me in an unexpected way. For the record this is not intended as a review per se but will likely resemble one by the end, as is the nature of my prose. If you didn’t see the film it had some early buzz with director Sean Penn and lead Emile Hirsch, NTM a haunting soundtrack provided by Eddie Vedder. It’s about a clever, upper-middle class college grad in conflict with what he perceives as “evil” in the world and forsakes all his material possessions (including a hefty trust fund) for travel and the open road as he nomadically hops from locale to locale. He eventually embarks on his “Great Alaskan Journey” as he heads north in Thoreau-like fashion to go “Into the Wild” and live off the land, away from society.

Of course the film has soft themes and sub-plots that provide substance to this tale. For example the narrator in the film is his sister, played by Jena Malone, who along with his parents he has abandoned without so much as a phone call in over a year. His justification for such a selfish and thoughtless demeanor is his goal of enlightenment, which he believes can only come via separation from society and the constructs built within it.

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SPOILERS ahead if you care to see this film. 1.This whole thing REALLY happened. 2.The main character (the student) was found DEAD, presumably from starvation weeks later by moose hunters.

Other than these hunters telling of how his decomposing corpse resembled, no one really knows what he did for the 119 days he lived out there in the wilderness. He kept a crude journal, mostly devoid of empiric facts and instead consisting of introversion and his personal philosophies. So how the hell did Sean Penn stretch that into 2.5 hrs of film? The film goes so far as to suggest he was accidentally poisoned by some local flora he ingested in an attempt to fend off starvation, despite no such evidence found on autopsy or botanical survey of the plants in question (by university PhDs, nonetheless).

In addition the movie never talks about how he was 20 miles from a town with a doctor that might’ve saved him. Or that he didn’t even bring a magnetic compass or map. Or that he was an inexperienced hunter, never trained to use a gun. Or that…sigh. I can see how it’s easy to canonize the dead, or feel empathy for those who are gone. I certainly felt that way by the dénouement. But at the end of it all, he was a spoiled, too-smart for the world kid who went to the forest with little food, water or training and ended up dying slowly from starvation. I do feel empathy for this man and what he endured. The story made me sad. I just don’t think that’s someone to look up to.