The film, Into The Wild, just started showing on cable. I actually had wanted to go see it in the movie theaters, but somehow missed it back then.
Saw the film last night on cable.
While I guess you could say I thought the film was done well, I really, really hated the lead character, Chris McCandless. I know this is supposedly a true story, based off the book, but what an absolute idiot, asshole, jerk this guy was - I am going only from the film version:
Mommy and daddy weren’t perfect…boo hoo…get a fuckin’ grip. They offered to buy you a new car and you threw a shitfit. They offered to pay for Harvard Law School, which you blew off - all supposedly because they had a rather rowdy history of screaming and yelling and pushing (but no physical abuse to their kids) and (gasp!) daddy had a son from a previous marriage and only married his mother (his mistress at the time) after the fact. On a scale of 1 to 10, dude, I got news for you - your parents didn’t even sink below 7 at worst.
You act like a five year old and run away after college without telling a single person, including the sister you supposedly love so much - abandoning your car, setting fire to your money and wandering off - ah yes, there is a plan.
You kayak down to Mexico and seem perplexed that it is a problem to get back into the States without an ID or any paperwork whatsoever - and you graduated with honors from college? Idiot.
You hook up with a hippie couple - playing cute and coy with a woman who obviously is infatuated with you, but you give a quick bye-bye and off you go.
You start taking odd jobs to survive (hey, how did that money burning work out for you?) and meet up with some other people that you sort of play pals with, but fully intend to shed when the timing is right.
Your grand scheme to go live “in the wilds” of Alaska is hair-brained at best. You get your wilderness skills and knowledge from a few conversations with a sober drunk from the bar.
You befriend an elderly man who makes a generous offer of adopting you as his grandson, and instead of humoring him and saying, “Sure, when I get back!” you blow him off too.
Every single person you meet suggests at least writing a postcard to your parents, but no. Not even a postcard to your sister - in care of a friend of hers or something…nope.
Off you go to Alaska, woefully unprepared, woefully unskilled in living in the wild, and to say the least - things don’t turn out well for you.
I left home after college and went to Europe on my own, and I am fully aware that 20-somethings think they know everything, but you were a piece of work - selfish, unforgiving, arrogant, using people along the way - there was not a single redeeming factor in your entire personality.
Perhaps this was the point of the film/book. I don’t know for sure. I know that early reviews talked about the tragedy that befell this wonderful youth - but personally, I thought the film simply showed how one stubborn, idiotic asshole walked away from everything to prove a point and wound up paying dearly. Talk about throwing up a free lunch - this guy was a total idiot.
I basically agree. And the hell of it is, that McCandless could have probably survived if he had just taken a map and a compass. How the fuck can you not take a map and compass into the wilderness of Alaska? He was also right near a river but he didn’t bring any fishing gear. The only firearm he brought was a .22 rifle, which by some miracle he used to kill a moose (I feel very sorry for that unlucky animal.) The meat went to waste anyway because he didn’t know how to preserve it properly.
For all intents and purposes he was mentally deficient and he voluntarily walked into a deathtrap.
I liked the movie, and I agree of course that the main character was stupid and reckless maybe even ungrateful, but when I saw the movie something in me stirred and whispered “we could do that……”, the voices are quiet now but there is still a bit of restless in me left.
He told his sister, didn’t he? She covered for him.
People get so angry at the book/movie, but I don’t care that he was reckless because it never seemed like he was the “hero” of the story. It’s just a story of an amazing adventure.
I agree with all of the OP’s beefs against McCandless. He was a selfish jerk who’d had everything handed to him on a silver platter throughout his young life, and developed Kerouacian ideas about chucking it all and heading into the wilderness. When he did go, he was shockingly ill-prepared, as well as almost utterly heedless of the feelings of his family and friends, many of whom loved and cared for him deeply. For me at least, the romantic/adventurous theme of his story is far outweighed by the realization that he was a clueless jerk. Krakauer certainly explored both in his book, which my book club discussed last year. Highly recommended.
Incidentally, I realized recently that the actress who plays the young trailer-park girl who develops a crush on Chris and offers herself to him is also in the Twilight movie.
The character was definitely screwed up, but I felt such an agonizing feeling of “inner” loneliness throughout the whole film. I found it very disturbing.
I found the film pretty faithful to the book. McCandless was one of those people who think they walk on water. I wonder if he regretted his arrogance, while he was starving to death in that bug-ridden abandoned school bus? He probably saw himself as a doomed romantic hero-it probably never occured to him what a pathetic ending it was for him. When I think about the courageous common folk who struggle with poverty every day, and think of what a priviledged fool like McCandless THREW away, it makes me sick.:smack:
Infuriatingly, he was a day’s hike away from a supply cabin just loaded with emergency food rations and first aid supplies. If he’d brought along a trail map, he would have found that there was a pulley system to cross the raging river only a half-mile from where he’d tried to cross.
That being said, his age would have been about right for something like a bipolar disorder or some other mental illness to crop up. Often mental illness tarts to manifest in the early 20s, and setting your cash on fire and nearly drowning yourself paddling crazy-ass rapids, sounds like a manic thing to do.
Watching the flick, I got the impression that there may be more to his state of mind than just being a reckless wandering spirit. There is “reckless” and there is “RECKLESS.” He was too entirely reckless for someone who was intensely looking for an extreme ascetic experience/vision quest kind of thing. For someone as disciplined as he demonstrated himself to be, it seems unlikely that he would be that careless unless something just wasn’t right in his head.
BTW, the old guy read the initial article in Outside magazine and realized he had met Chris. He then talked to Krakauer so that more about that time was in the book. He is in the book under a fake name, he did not want his real name used.
The movie suggests daily raging arguments and that the father abused the mother. That’s no worse than a 7? Is that because they were also wealthy? And, is deciding not to go to law school a moral failing?
The car was totaled in a flash flood, and I get the impression he had only saved that money for gas.
Never happened. He kayaked into Mexico and then had to go to the border office because he had no ID, but he was never surprised by that.
And what was he supposed to do, live as their adopted son? She’s infatuated with him because he’s a young version of her husband, and whatever it is he says to her helps save their marriage.
He came into their life as a vagabond. One could argue much of the reason why he becomes friends with them is because they admire his sense of adventure. He doesn’t shed them as much as the time comes for him to move along.
He tells them they’ll talk about it when he gets back. Besides running down to the local court and signing the papers right then, what more do you want.
You mean besides donating the remaining $24,000 from his college fund to charity, refusing to screw a ready and willing 15-16 year old girl, showing great interest in other peoples lives, getting a retired old man to realize he’s letting life pass him by and wanting to live in a society that isn’t judgmental or materialistic.
One thing that puzzled me was the bus. How did that get there? How could he be so far from civilization if there is a bus there? How was he going to camp if he hadn’t found the bus?
This is not an endearing quality. That money is not his - it was given with a very specific purpose. It was selfish of him to give it away like that, regardless of how worthy the charity was.
A detail conveniently added to the movie to make The Most Selfish Person Ever to appear a bit less selfish and more relatable.
I guess you could describe it that way. I would describe it as being a selfish little prick who could give a rat’s ass about anyone else in the world other than himself, evidenced by his complete inability to feel any empathy for them or his family - otherwise he would have made the smallest of efforts to let them know he was okay.
I can’t remember if this was in the book or not - I don’t think it was.
And yet at every turn of his life, all he does is take. He’s like that little shit in the book “The Giving Tree”.
My main issue with him was his idea that we should live in a world without money or something like that. All the while, living off of the charity of other people who spent the money they worked for on him. Nice.
In the book, IIRC, he got stuck, ran the battery down and just abandoned the car. But park rangers were able to start it up again and drive it away.
mr. jp, the bus had been used as a dorm for workmen in the Alaskan outback, and then was put in that particular place as an emergency shelter for hunters and outdoorsmen. It was never thought that anyone would take up longterm residence in it.