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“The sky was falling and streaked with blood; I heard you calling me, then you disappeared into dust, up the stairs, into the wild!”

–ITW, Movie

Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer is a real story that portrays a world that is dark, messy, and at times, dreadfully intense. Christopher McCandless is seen as the main character in the story. He is a young man in his twenties, freshly graduated from Emory University, embarking on a journey while making terrible life choices.

The movie opens with a literary reference, precisely, an excerpt from a poem written by George Gordon Byron which seems like a good fit keeping in mind the themes this movie is based on.

In the first half of the movie, the resentment that Chris’s parents have for each other is shown. Chris feels that they were a bad fit for each other and strongly expresses his desire to go back in time to tell them that it would be a disaster if they marry.

But, honestly, Chris is a contradiction in himself. He is kind, and yet he isn’t. One moment he is seen as a compassionate man who donates all his life savings to a charity and another moment, he flees to some other town in search of an adventure without informing or being in touch with anyone in his family.

This man is one complex being. He claims that he doesn’t want people to be hurting, but later on becomes the major reason for the pain that his family has to endure. And, it is no ordinary kind of pain that he causes—it’s suffocating and definitely lasts a lifetime, till the time his family withers and dies.

I know that Chris was hurting because of his parent’s messy relation, but how does causing others pain just because you are in pain (irrespective of the reason of pain) do any justice?  

Freedom

Let me spill this to you: any person claiming to have the ultimate freedom is an awful liar. There’s nothing like “ultimate freedom.” It’s just an imaginative myth that people like to live in.

Having the freedom of choice is one thing, and having “ultimate freedom” another.

You can never be totally free if you are born in this world. Every person has to grow up and have a fair share of all kinds of responsibilities (physical, financial, emotional, familial, etc.). You cannot just become a selfish, ruthless chump and leave everything behind only to head North to experience living in the Alaskan Wilderness.

The thought of isolating yourself from the world might seem exciting initially, but it rarely turns out to be a good one. You won’t find happiness if you completely cut ties with society for a long time.  

“True happiness is only real when it is shared,” concluded Chris in his last moments.

Also, it’s no fun to always keep refuting the system—it had been built a certain way for a reason. Surfing against the direction of the current will only make you drown faster.

Experiences

Chris believed that sitting on your butt in one place doesn’t help in opening up to new experiences.

And that’s true.

…But, living off in the wildernesses wasn’t the only way to gain new experiences.

Human Relationships 

Chris believed that joy doesn’t only come from human relationships, which is also true. But, again, it doesn’t justify the fact that joy could be found in risking your life in the wilderness without gaining the proper knowledge, training, and skills to live in such conditions.

Of course, he had his books to refer to. But, see, what good those books did to him at the end of the movie.

Forgiveness

Chris battles with embracing forgiveness.

He doesn’t forgive his parents. He didn’t even want to. Even when the old man, Ron, told him “when you forgive, you love,” he didn’t seem to delve deep into what Ron was trying to convey to him as an essence.

Society 

Society can be atrocious, I know. But, what can you actually do about it? Or what did he do about it? If he really wanted to stop all that nonsense and grief in society, then he could have started small by helping people through social volunteering, or donating (not just those $24,000), or doing something similar like that by himself.

Just cribbing about people being bad to each other all the time doesn’t magically make things right. Does it? You have to get up and do the dirty work! You cannot change the world. Yes, you cannot. But, one could at least try a little.

But, instead of doing that, what did Chris choose to do? ESCAPE! That’s it! He escaped from society calling it a so-called corrupt modern civilization. Did he forget that the clothes that he wore, the packaged rice that he ate to survive, the books that read, the glasses that he wore, the journal he wrote in—everything was a gift of this very same corrupt modern civilization!

Conclusion  

To sum up this review, I would say that the pain Chris caused to his family was far greater than the pain he had received from them. Even if it was the other way around, then too, I wouldn’t have actively advocated for the terrible life choices Chris made that made him suffer till his last breath. 

My Rating– 3/10 (even 3 is an overstatement for me).

(Well, generally, I do not write movie reviews but this movie was a bummer for me in so many aspects that I couldn’t help but pen down my opinion as a blog post. Maybe, I would have been a little fine if the movie wasn’t based on a real story—plz tell me that it’s a work of fiction! 🙁 )

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Author’s Final note– If you haven’t watched this movie till now then I suggest that you avoid it. (Please do not hate on me if you’ve already seen and liked it. This review is just a mirror of my feelings that I don’t intend to promote or endorse in any way).

Till then,

P.S. Rest in Light, Supertramper.

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