Into The Wild

Cafe Society
21

Hal Holbrook’s character had a pretty good message to him as well (echoed in the ending): happiness begins with forgiveness.

Powerful film, and surprisingly life-affirming, considering the ending (and considering the director).

The message of the movie is quite different from that of the book. The book was like a Darwin Award nomination in thesis form. Not so the movie, which hardly focuses at all on McCandless’s deadly combination of arrogance and naivete. Not that it’s a feel-good movie, but it does tend to find the positive in the life McCandless led.

22

I just saw the movie and thought it was a very straightforward presentation of the events and the people involved. Hirsch did an excellent job, as did Holbrook.

23

Isn’t it a bit like climbing Mt. Everest? You risk your life and health for a goal that many see as foolish. Of course, getting to the top of Everest IS something-while starving to death in the Alaskan tundra seems like a rather pointless accomplishment.

24

Just saw the movie last night . . . well done. I’d recommend it to anyone. I understand the arguments of his “wasted” life, suicide, etc, but if nothing else, I found the movie inspiring. As a “corporate” guy with debt and obligations like most everyone else, there is something refreshing and attractive about a guy who burns his money and goes into the wild, even if it’s completely idiotic.

25

Yeah, I agree.

I don’t know about “refreshing”, but still “interesting”.

I’m glad that guys like that exist. . .guys to maintain the mythos of the individualistic American, and remind us about our connections with the Wilderness, and the comforts we take for granted.

Just to address some points in the thread. . .if you read the book, there was nothing about this that was “suicidal”. Krakauer spotlights some individuals who really did apparently walk into the wild on suicide missions.

The major mistake McCandless seemed to make was not bringing a good map, but it seemed like part of the challenge for him was to do it without a map.

I’m not sure if the version of the book I read had an epilogue that earlier editions didn’t, but I didn’t get the notion that this was suicide, or that he was woefully unprepared. He did a pretty good job for a while, and it was kind of an odd mistake that Krakauer believes killed him.

I was a bit of a wanderer/traveler when I was younger too, and did some solo camping (sometimes in stupid places). But, I was always just too fond of my ties to really go crazy, even though I felt the pull.

I guess I just feel like some of my dials that are set to 7 were set to 10 on McCandless, and I don’t think that people with those same dials set to 0 really can sympathize.

(I haven’t seen the movie. )

26

Refreshing and attractive? Not so sure about that. I saw the movie a few days ago, and was rather surprised at the ambivalence about the main character. Knowing Penn, I expected hagiography; I got rather a more interestingly ambiguous portrait. McCandless was, and is portrayed in the movie as, driven, charming, intelligent, selfish, short-sighted, and arrogant, and ultimately self-destructive. I got the definite sense from the film that Penn believes McCandless is to be respected for the singularity of his vision and purpose, but criticized for his self-absorption, and that ultimately neither of these has much bearing on whether or not McCandless is likable. It’s a pretty remarkable artistic achievement, and one of the more noteworthy films of the year.

27

Well said.

Penn was much more evenhanded than Krakauer was in his article/book. This seems to be one of those stories that cleaves the population in two - you either sympathise with the aspirations and willingness to act on his feelings of the protagonist, or you laugh at his naivete and bravado.

I fall somewhere between the two, or maybe more accurately, float from one perspective to the other.

28

Maybe I need to read through the thread again more closely, but I didn’t see anyone mention the REAL reason that Chris died (at least according to the movie…I haven’t read the book): he ate a poisoned berry that caused food not to be digested properly, and therefore caused starvation. I got the idea that he had lived through the winter just fine, and was doing fine. Hungry, but not starving, until he ate the berries that made him sick, and by the time he figured it out with the book he had (which, along with his rifle, him getting instructions for skinning and preserving game that he got from that one guy, and his endless supply of matches, made me think he was very well-prepared for his journey), he was too weak and sick to do anything about it, and probably hoped until the end that he would be found. He was found, two weeks too late, but if not for those berries he would have been fine when they came. I didn’t see him as suicidal at all. He wanted an adventure. Maybe he wasn’t as prepared as he could have been, but he didn’t just walk out there with nothing but his wits. He survived the hard part, but the bad luck berry got him.

He’s not to be glamorized, and yeah, he was kindofa selfish dick, but I don’t think he deserves the scorn he’s gotten here and elsewhere.

29

Based on only having seen the movie, I’d argue a little bit with this.

He was careless and ate the wrong berry, but at the time he was already pretty hungry and well on his way to starving. He hadn’t found any game lately (he was standing there yelling, “Where’s all the game now?” or something like that) and had lost a lot of weight, so his thought processes were a bit muddied. He went out desperately searching for anything he could eat. Low blood sugar can really mess up the reasoning and decision-making centers of the brain, and it made him less careful than he needed to be.

So while I agree he technically survived the toughest part, the winter had taxed his reserves to the breaking point. He broke.

30

Which way do you think Krakauer was biased?

I found him pretty even handed in the book. He wasn’t critical, but he wasn’t praising him either. He did not give short shrift on what this did to the people who loved McCandless.

He gave voice to the people (particularly Alaskans) who were very critical of him. He pointed out many simple things that McCandless overlooked.

Krakauer certainly respected the fact that McCandless had a calling, and acted on it. I just didn’t find the book slanted at all.

Also, how “wintry” was the movie?

People are talking about him surviving the winter, but he didn’t go into the woods until late April, if I have my timeline correct. There was still snow on the ground, for sure, but the book didn’t make it sound like he went through anything too cold and harsh.

31

The Wikipedia article casts some doubt on the poison plant idea:

32

The movie is not explicit about its timelines (and includes the standard language in the fine-print disclaimer at the end of the credits about “events and characters being condensed and compressed”), but there is definitely a sense of seasonal change over several weeks or a few months. In the film’s version of the story, when McCandless arrives in Alaska, the weather is mild, then there’s a snowfall, and then a melt; however, the time elapsed is unclear. I’ve been to Alaska only once (and in the summer, no less), but it didn’t look like what I would expect an actual winter to be. For myself, I took it as a mid-autumn snow flurry, not a January blizzard. I will say, the one thing I appreciated was that the movie took pains to present the biggest danger as not the snow itself but the fluctuations in landscape, specifically the way the rivers change levels from season to season. One of the biggest impressions I took away from my own Alaskan visit was how unpredictable and actively dynamic the terrain was, and the movie, according to my limited experience, gets this aspect of McCandless’s struggle exactly right.

33

Re: the last two posts.

I’ve recently read Into The Wild, and yes, in the latest edition, he puts forth the “moldy seeds” theory. I’d forgotten the details until you mentioned it.

Also, the book talks about the changing landscape as being a factor. Specifically, he was able to cross a river going that that would have widened into the summer as the land thawed. The book also mentioned that there was a place to ford about a mile upstream from the trail he came in on.

34

Well now, that’s just making me think the kid was an ignoramus again. Who wouldn’t check up and downstream for a possible alternative crossing point?

I suppose the starvation was affecting him at that point, but y’know, he shouldn’t have waited until he was that weak to try to get out.

Seems to me like a deadly combination of arrogance and ignorance.

35

Well, after a hike to the river, he might be looking at spending a night out there.

Anyway, so there was a crossing point a mile upstream. There might have been a grocery store 2 miles north of the bus.

There might have been a ranger station 6 miles south (actually there was).

There might have been a paved road another 5 miles west.

There’s a lot of different ways he could have survived, not the least of which was never doing it in the first place.

I don’t think that’s a fair characterization to say he died of arrogance and ignorance.

It’s like. . .let’s say you set sail in 1492. You got lumber and sailcloth for repairs, you got oranges for scurvy, you got medical supplies for emergencies, you got food and fishing poles. You’ve thought of everything that everyone before you had thought of, and then some. You’ve checked and double checked your list. You’ve sprayed for termites.

You get out to sea, and all of a sudden you discover that some rats have eaten half your grain.

Were Space Shuttle astronauts killed because of the O-ring failure through arrogance and ignorance?

Were the other ones killed by the loss of a heat tile killed through arrogance and ignorance.

Now, I’m not trying to equate what Mr. Supertramp did with Columbus, or the astronauts, but the fact it when you’re doing somethat that extreme, there’s a pretty good chance of dying just because of what you’re doing. It’s not arrogance and ignorance, per se.

Besides, an outlook like yours sort of ignores that while this cat didn’t willfully want to die, working 9 to 5 in Fairfax County would have been more tragic for a person like him, than dying of starvation in the woods.

36

I do. The examples you list are not analogous, because in those cases the ignorance was not wilful. The information was simply not known.

With McCandless, on the other hand, information would have certainly been available on the terrain he was entering, on seasonal changes in the river, on how many freakin’ calories you need to stay alive.

McCandless, in his intellectual arrogance, failed to (or chose not to) familiarize himself with the available information. Arrogance and ignorance, a fatal combination.

37

Nor was it with him.

He did familiarize himself with the local flora and fauna. He kept himself alive a long time. He had a gun. He had food. He had shells.

He did have a map. He didn’t have a good map. If you buy Krakauer’s final analysis, he wasn’t even eating seeds that should have killed him. The seeds he was eating happened to get moldy. That’s not willful ignorance. It’s bad luck more than anything. It’s just as easy to say “NASA should have known about the O-Rings” as it is to say “he should have known about seed mold.”

He had survived by himself in stark conditions before. Not as stark as he faced in Alaska, but stark, nonetheless.

There’s a huge difference between knowing a river is going to flood (and saying “fuck it”), and looking at a river on a map, and not understanding that it might get wider in the summer. One is arrogance. One is regular ignorance.

The fact is – and Krakauer highlights this in the book – people have walked into the wilderness and done simple ignorant things. Some make it out and become praised adventurers (himself, John Muir, etc.), and some die.

You can’t rate the stupidness of their adventures and preparations solely by the outcome. There’s a lot of luck involved.

38

Rather than get too involved in the conflict over McCandless and his lifestyle, I think the movie itself is really great. The cinematography is wonderful — not just the shots of Nature, but the very natural feel of the people. There are bits that feel like a documentary (of course the Salvation Mountain part essentially is) but it never verges too far away from trying to show Chris’s point of view. And just about every supporting part is brilliantly acted.

Cervaise expressed it rather well up there - a great artistic achievement.

The portrayal is an attempt to show what his life was like, especially to people who don’t understand it at all. I think it does a pretty good job with that, while also comparing it to people who might understand it but have a little more sense. It’s not trying to romanticize it at all. I think Trunk put it well, except I’d say I’m about a 7 and Chris was a 12.

Did anyone catch the (Sundance? IFC?) special with Sean Penn and Jon Krakauer? It goes into some of their motivation for the book and film, and winds up with them revisiting the bus.

39

IIRC from reading the book, Chris went up to the Fairbanks bus in spring just as the snow melted enough for him to get in there. The book describes him walking through old snow to get to the bus. So… he was not a winter survivalist. He did do quite well for himself for a while, but (as others in this thread have observed) his lack of overall woods-savvy led to his death. A more experienced outdoorsman might have looked for a way around the deep stream crossing, would have known how to preserve the moose meat that was wasted when Chris erroneously tried to smoke it, and would have probably carried a better map.

It looks like Chris didn’t want a better map, however, and wanted to live very close to the edge. He puposefully chose to limit his options to prove something to himself, but it looks like he limited his options too much.

40

Well, it is an amazing movie, regardless of where you come down on McCandless.