The beautiful thing about film and art is the way it moves you. It can carry you along from one place to another. Sometimes not even aware of it, we’re swept up into something, and then gently let back down when the experience closes.
I recently saw the film version of John Krakauer’s bestselling book Into the Wild. The film, just released by Paramount Vantage in late September, boasts Sean Penn as writer/director. Set in the early 90s, the film follows the story of Christopher McCandless (played by Emile Hirsch), a fresh graduate from Emory University with high scores, and big aspirations. Well, one would think. After graduation, Chris gave the $24,000 in his savings account to charity, abandoned his family, and set out on a journey that would take him to South Dakota, Mexico, and ultimately the great white north of Alaska.
All of us have dreamed at some point in our lives of making the same decisions. Life can get so muddled and fake that we long for this idyllic place. A place where life is more “true”, and different than whatever has scarred or hurt us in our past. You will find early on in this film that it is not a “survival” film. It is not a film of great adventure, or of a heroic character beating the odds as he wages war against the wild.
This is a film of escape.
McCandless lives in the world where status and degrees are currency. Harvard Law is the next logical step, and you certainly can’t drive a beat up Datsun if you’re going to attend Harvard Law. That’s what Walt McCandless thinks, Chris’ father. The tension that develops between this seemingly happy family is overwhelming. So overwhelming for Chris, that he escapes.
With Thoreau and Tolstoy in hand, and a backpack of essentials he sets out for his own personal quest into the wild, where the constraints of a bastardized society do not reach. You can find ideals in the wild. The way things “should be”.
In the wild, you wouldn’t have to deal with your father’s abuse. You wouldn’t have to live with knowing your father had a previous family, with previous children you knew nothing about. Everything wouldn’t be a fraud. Things have been said. Things done inside the walls of a family that cannot be healed in Chris’ mind. The only tonic, the only cure, is leaving it all behind. Not just leaving, but becoming someone else…Alexander Supertramp.
His consoling words along the way to another, speak for himself as well.
“Some people feel like they don't deserve love. They walk away quietly into empty spaces, trying to close the gaps of the past.” So it was for Alex Supertramp, and Chris McCandless.
The wild calls us at different times in our lives. It taunts us with its beauty, promising that it can fill the void, and make us happy. For Supertramp it does. For the better part of 2 years he’s dead to the world. Dead to his family, his sister, and the society that hurt him so deeply.
When McCandless’ parents first realize his disappearance is voluntary, they can’t understand him. They want to scold, yell, “Why is he doing this to us? Why is he embarrassing us?” These are the reactions Chris expects. What he doesn’t see however, is what his sister Carine narrates at one point in the film.
“I wish you could see them now. They’re not the same people they were when you left…they’re softer.”
Perhaps if Chris could have seen how his parents had changed. How they had gone from selfish frauds in his mind, to…parents. Hurting parents.
This journey is an escape into the wild. An escape from people. The journey is to find all one could ever need in the bosom of nature herself. Though many set out on such a journey, they’re often left with the same void upon arrival. The void that only relationship can fill. Only the happiness that another human can provide.
Each character McCandless comes into contact with on his journey has the same story. The same void of forgotten relationships, unforgiven people, and they plead with him to turn back. To stay with them. But his void is not yet overwhelmed.
On a desert hillside, his grandfather like friend, Franz, played by Hal Holbrook, pleads with him,
“When you forgive, you love. And when you love, God's light shines upon you.”This is what we wish and long for Chris to see as we watch. We pray he feels the love of a Father waiting at home to see his face. He wants to know,
“What if I were smiling and running into your arms? Would you see then what I see now?” We hope the prodigal will return, and instead of finding the judgmental glare of the father he knew, he would find the loving arms of his father wrapped around him, holding, crying.
The wild is real. It does not care for others. It does not take into account your quest or personal journey. It does not care for your scars or wounds which you bring into her cave. And so when we find ourselves there, armed with Chris’ words, “Rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness... give me truth.” The wild mocks us and tells us to go home. Only the happiness and relationship that community with other human beings bring, can heal the wounds and scars we all carry. Only our lives together can overcome the abuse of a father. For McCandless, it was what the wild so brutally taught him.
“If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.”His last words were,
“happiness is real, only if it is shared”.
Are we sharing our lives? Do we know the wounds and cracks of our lives can only be healed in relationship, in community?
This is a film that does not leave you in the same place you began, and for that reason alone; it is a beautiful work of art worth our attention. Make the drive. Find the theater.
Into the Wild.
