“IF YOU WANT SOMETHING IN LIFE REACH OUT AND GRAB IT.”
I think the best way to conclude our academic year is by watching a great movie by the director Sean Penn.( Mystic River 2003, Milk 2008, Dead Man Walking 1995). It took him 10 years to make this movie since he had read the novel & was fascinated by it.
The movie won the première film prize at Rome Cinema Festival in 2007 and it was plurinominated at the Golden Globe Awards where Eddie Vedder with the song” Guaranteed” won the Best Original Song – Motion Picture. The soundtrack is really unforgettable. I never get tired of listening to it!
The movie is based on the BOOK Into the Wild (1996), the biography of Christopher McCandless, (an American wanderer who adopted the name Alexander Supertramp and hiked into the Alaskan wilderness with little food and equipment, hoping to live a period of solitude. Almost four months later, he died of starvation near Denali National Park and Preserve) written by the American writer and mountaineer Jon Krakauer. The book is an expansion of “Death of an Innocent”, an article also by Jon Krakauer that appeared in the January 1993 issue of Outside.
PLOT: Chris McCandless (Emile Hirsh) is a smart college graduate but one with altruistic dreams. Chris decides instead of following the routine, he’d rather give his life savings to charity (in beneficenza), burn all of his identification, and hitchhike (fare l’autostop) across America trying to get to Alaska desiring to escape society and get back to nature & wilderness. He hitchhikes, hops trains, and hangs out with hippies. He also works briefly with a farmer and is befriended by a widowed leather worker. He enjoys his liberating freedom, but his parents worry that they don’t know where he is and are crushed (heartbroken) by his disappearance. Chris makes it to Alaska, where he delves further into nature. He hikes out to a far and remote campsite and discovers an abandoned bus. He decides to set up life there and manages to survive there for a few months living off the land- living his version of the American Dream. But as his supplies dwindle (decrease) he becomes trapped by the land he so valiantly sought out leading to tragedy.
Download & print the PDF INTO THE WILD
Here’s the video of the song Society by Eddie Vedder.
Here’s the trailer of the movie:
I hope this last movie will make you “think” rather than “judge”, ‘cause it’s a story about men’s endless SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS and I’d like to end with a quotation that contains the very essence of this quest: “I’m going to paraphrase Thoreau here… rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness… GIVE ME THE TRUTH”. • HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED ( La felicità esiste solo se condivisa)
Recensione in Italiano particolarmente significativa di Massimo Rota dalla rivista di cinema I Duellanti
La storia – La vera storia di Chris McCandless il quale, dopo la laurea, abbandona auto, soldi e famiglia per mettersi in viaggio e raggiungere in solitaria l’Alaska. Perché nell’aprile del 1992 Chris McCandless, un ragazzo di buona famiglia della costa orientale degli Stati Uniti, raggiunse l’Alaska in autostop e affrontò a piedi e da solo le terre selvagge a nord del monte McKinley, finendo malissimo sedici settimane dopo? A questa domanda ha cercato di dare una risposta Jon Krakauer, prima con un articolo di novemila parole per la rivista Outside, poi con il libro Nelle terre estreme. Che ha fatto del ragazzo e della sua decisione di mollare identità, famiglia e civiltà per “entrare” nella natura, una leggenda per camminatori, un argomento di discussione fra alpinisti, un punto di riferimento per ecologisti arrabbiati… L’aura che si è creata intorno alla sua figura è dovuta soprattutto al fatto che lui dalla foresta non è più uscito e che vicino al suo corpo è stato ritrovato un diario. Commovente e lucida testimonianza della vita di un ventiquattrenne appassionato lettore di Thoreau, London e Tolstoj (del quale sottolineava passi come questo: «Volevo il movimento non un’esistenza quieta. Volevo l’emozione, il pericolo, la possibilità di sacrificare qualcosa al mio amore»). Su questa storia che pone in primo piano l’eterno fascino che suscita il selvaggio, l’inesplorato nell’immaginario americano, il rifiuto del sistema di vita che impone una società capitalistica, il desiderio della contemplazione e della purezza, Sean Penn ha girato Into the Wild dove risuona inesorabile e limpida la voce della natura, il canto viscerale del primitivo che è identico a quello che risucchiava il cane Buck in Il richiamo della foresta (in originale The Call of the Wild). Trentasei location per portare in scena un clamoroso rifiuto della psicologia sostituita dal ricorso al primordiale, perciò tutti i personaggi che si affannano a cercare le motivazioni del ragazzo non ottengono risposte. Qui c’è solo un urlo contro l’omologazione della società di massa che si fa istinto, per questo il tempo umano non ha più senso e Chris può permettersi due anni di vagabondaggi alla ricerca di un’esperienza pura e trascendentale, non vivendo mai lo strazio di un distacco. (…) Penn disegna un personaggio inafferrabile, prigioniero di un sogno impossibile: «Datemi la verità, invece che amore, denaro e fama» scriveva Thoreau in Walden, ovvero La vita nei boschi (uno dei libri ritrovati vicino alla sua salma). Imbizzarrito come il suo personaggio il regista, per tenere a bada l’incandescente materia, si serve di uno sguardo morbido e preciso: movimenti di macchina plastici sotto un cielo e in uno spazio incombenti contribuiscono all’intento mimetico e filosofico del racconto. A rendere chiaro il processo di Chris verso uno stato naturale e primitivo, in una sorta di palingenetico e indimenticabile congiungimento alla madre Terra.
ASSIGNMENT (after watching the movie): How would you relate this movie and book to your life? Do you share any of Mc Candless’ values or ideals, and if yes what? Do you think this kind of attitude and social criticism may be applied also to our Italian contemporary society? Choose one of Mc Candless’s quotes you particularly like to discuss in class. (final oral testing 😉
See you
“Into the Wild” is a movie by Sean Penn, an American director. I’ve never seen a movie as this one but i really appreciate it. In my opinion it is really involving because speaks about a real story, but it’s too much slowly for my taste.
The movie is about a man, Christopher McCandless, who decided to give up his carrer, and after his graduation he went to Alaska from Virginia.
In my oipnion this choice was really brave. It’s really difficult going against the family and friends only to reach the happiness. All of us have a clear concept of happiness, but only few people fight to reach it!
Sometimes i don’t have the courage to do something against the mass bucause i’t isn’t simple. Sometimes i sacrifice my happiness because i don’t want to appear ‘diverse’. According to Christopher, i often think that one time when i wanted to meet my friends i used to go to their home, instead now i use to send them only a lot of text messages. A life without phones will be a better life!
For our society, this movie can means that the concept of happiness is really various. The money can’t buy it and each of us have his personal concept of happiness. We have to do the possibile to achieve it. Nowadays it’s difficult that someone make a choice similiar to Christopher because we use to have a lot of comforts.
“You don’t need human relationships to be happy, God has placed it all around us.”
I choose this quotation because in my opnion is a bit provocative, Nowadays there are too much false people, with false relationships. We have to pay more attention to the people that we have around, because sometimes it’s better being alone than with bad people. In my life the relationships with my friends, my family and my teachers are really important, and i think they aren’t people of the society (people who are ‘so bad to each other’), but they are pure ones.
I don’t appreciate a lot this movie because it is not my cup of tea but in my opinion it is a masterpiece and everyone should see it. Into the wild it is based on a true story and talk about a boy that after being graduate left all his things: car, money and his family for undertake a juorney. I’m firmly sure that a lot of people would like to take this way for understand who they are and because they want live wildly and they are fascinate from this. I don’t want this life and in this moment I prefer the ‘normal’ life for example have a family, a job, a dog and a father-in-law. So I think that my life don’t have a lot in common with this movie also because I consider wrong refuse progress because I love being lazy with all the facilitation so I cannot appreciate the ideals of Mc Candless.
The main character is helped by his geographic position because in USA people are more slaves from technology than italian people so it is more difficult find a italian Mc Candless, but it can happen in every part of the world. For example I associate the idea of the main character in one of the monks in Tibet, because they both want live isolate and segregate from the world.
My quotation is:” You don’t need human relationship to be happy, God has placed it all around us”.
I had already seen this movie, but the first time it had failed to take me to the end, but I have to say that I watched it maybe three years ago and so I was more immature and less prone to appreciate some kind of films.
See it again help me to understand better some concepts also if I can’t claim to having fully undertsood yet.
I can’t say that I loved the film because it’s not my genre, but I can say that I appreciated his message: money can’t buy happiness.
That was clear and we understood that, in fact Chris McCandless, the protagonist, cancel his identity and started a journey to Alaska for live in the nature even if he had everything he could desire out of life.
I don’t know if we can applied that criticism to our society, but I can say certainly that a lot of people complain because they has too little when in fact there are a lot of people living with much less.
Saying this I don’t want meant that everybody have to do like Chris because first it would be impossible, but second because as he discovered by himself ” happiness only real when shared” that in my opinion is the most important message of the film.
We can’t buy happiness, but we cannot even hope to live happy if we are lonely into the wild.
So in conclusion I can say that we could all be more happier if we appreciate what we have and also if we share it with someone we love! 🙂
”I don’t need money, make people cautious”
This movie about an extraordinary experience of this boy made me think quite deeply: I can sometimes share the same atmosphere of insincerity that he felt, owing to a money-based society, where success means economic wealth. Between all this lies in which even his family was involved, he bravely decided to leave and go away from all this, and live in solitude. However, even if I can understand his reasons, I would have done quite an opposite thing: trying to change, not only my inside thought, but even the others. I think that making people understanding that money is not the only is possible, and collaboration and sharing can lead to greater rewards than egoism and astuteness. For me here in Italy these last two attitudes are unfortunately more frequent: we live in a country where the “sly” who benefits from keep everything for him is considered smarter, and we should all do the same. “This is how it works in real world” they say, “It’s the only way”. I think that incredible and greater results can be obtained with sharing and commitment, in a much more serene way, without tramping on others to achieve success.
Comparing to the movie, I don’t think I’m the kind of guy that can leave alone in the forest; I’d like to live in a city. This is mainly because I love surrounding myself with friends and people in general, as I completely share the phrase “Happiness only real when shared”, which for me is the best quotation from the book. Another one that I liked so much is the first one up of this post, “If you want something in life, reach out and grab it”: makes you feel powerful, the power to change something that you dislike or think is wrong. And that’s how it is, you just need a good idea and a lot of willpower.
I quite like the movie, it is not the kind of movie that I like watching because I found the plot and the evolution of the actions a bit slow .
It ‘s a movie very thoughtful, very individual that focuses on human feelings and passions , on how each of us is different and wants something different. Emile Hirsc (the protagonist ) in this film wants freedom (even too much ) because he feels stifled by society and by wrong values .
This film has many positive values : giving the right importance to things, not thinking that I am worth for what I own , living in contact with nature. Instead I disagree on the conclusion, I do not think the solution is to live isolated away from the world over in Alaska. There are a lot of people against the values of this society but they live peacefully without being influenced. The solution should be consider much more important the relationships between people because man is made to live in community. I would recommend the film to anyone who has a soul “wild “, in other words who likes extreme adventures and loneliness.
“Make each day a new horizon.”
It’s really absurd a person in the world would follow in Christopher McCandless’s footsteps. This is because I think nowadays we’re too much tied to family and to civilization than in the past. So a choice like the one of McCandless could be considered an utopia.
I’d like to have a similar experience, alone by society and technology, but this would last not too much because staying isolated for a long time could be counter-productive and also dangerous for my health as happened to the character of the film.
I think the best way to feel some emotions that could get close to his experience, is to spend some time in the mountains in contact with nature, rigorously alone.
I consider it a great method to think only to yourself and to realize as a man, because staying in touch with nature is the only way to move away from the conformism and materialism of our society. In fact I interpret this film as a big criticism to our society. This is in contrast with the choice of Christopher, incentivized by reading some books of Thoreau and London, his conflicting relationship with his family, and finally his meeting during the journey with a couple of hippie.
About the film I consider it too slow in some parts because in my opinion there are too many flashbacks, that render the central part a bit tedious and poor of actions (for this reason it’s not so suitable for teenagers who prefer generally action movies)
Differently is the end of the film, at the same time reflective and more rich of actions, where you’re able to discover the main theme of “Into the Wild”. The thing I appreciated the most was the setting in Alaska, especially inside the abandoned bus (wonderful contraposition between the megalopolis of Atlanta and the desolate icy landscape of Alaska, that represents the future in contrast with the original place of studies and life).
The quote I chose is “how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong but to feel strong. To measure yourself at least once”, because it explains that in life it’s more important to be than to show, and so it’s more essential what you bring inside you than how the others see you.
The introspective movie, direct by Sean Penn, tells the story of Christopher McCandless, who left his family and his friends to live a life in solitude in contact with savage nature. His aim (target) was to arrive in Alaska during winter. Before he arrived there, he wanted to see a large part of the country to LIVE his life without money and without prejudices free by the limit of society.
It is a realistic and cruel movie, full of quotes and philosophic, composes by thousand-year old questions: life, live, animal and human. The actor who plays the principal role, Emile Hirsch, it’s very good in this role, it’s very involved and he had to lose weight for the last scenes. It describes a uncommon way of life that we aren’t used to see, but at the same time is an heavy critic of our contemporary society, who live thinking on: money, success and positive judgment of others.
The death of the principal character, it is a sort of “suicide” because he decided to stay there and live in this way; but at the same time he tried to escape but the river was iced and he tried to survive eating berries, that they revealed poisoned and he starved. This I think is one of the cruelest way to die. So is it the right way to live? This is the biggest question of the movie
One of my favorite scenes is where he had to decide killing moose or searching something other to eat or starving. He decided to kill the moose and he tried to preserve its meat for the future but he failed. In this moment, he thought about what he had doing. There is the principal question about the human nature and animals. He did something against his morality and he had to pay for this. Another great scene is when the old man told him to become his son and alexander refuse. For me, he did a wrong and egoistic choice against a person who is alone, old and gentle.
“No longer to be poisoned by civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land and become lost in the wild”. I think that it’s a “freedom” that, at first, you desire and dream but when you have it you would like to come back. In fact in some scene you can see Christopher think about his life in civilization and would came back in…it’s strange to do a choice like him and living lost in the wild”.
The soundtrack reflect this movie at perfection. It is write by pearl jam and is one of my favourite songs of them because it is so sweet with this soft voice and not heavy like their style.
I think it’s a good movie but I think is better for a middle age public because at our age is heavy and we not completely understand.
The film is about a young guy, Christopher McCandless, that feels oppressed by the capitalistic society and for that reason decides to escape and travel to Alaska, leaving the car, money, documents, family at home. That’s a brave decision but mostly a silent rebellion, a wish of peace and unspoiled feelings and perceptions, a research of purity and a real contact with nature and primitive instincts. The theme of voyage is the main point, a travel that gives to the guy the possibility to grow up and become a man, meet new people more similar and closed to him than his own family, have adventures, learn how to survive. Chris loves Thoreau, that said “rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness… give me the truth”. And is this truth that the guy is searching in his voyage, he wants to find who he really is, in the deep, in the nature, without corruption or external influences. Nobody can really understand his deep desire, it’s like an explosion, something that he cannot contain and control, and it’s something psychological, an individual need. It could be called madness because nobody succeeds in changing his mind and convincing him to stay, but for sure that obstinacy is generated by a real overwhelming situation at home. That need is so high that Chris is willing to leave also his loved sister to reach his personal target.
I think that Chris ideals and his feeling of imprisonment can be related also to our society, mostly to young people that have a bigger rebel spirit and are born in the technological world and might find it overwhelming sometimes. I like his idea of travel without anything, in nature, adapting to every situation and meeting other people, maybe really different from us for cultural aspects, and creating a link with them. Anyway I think that his decision is something too drastic. Even if I share his ideal of rebellion against a corrupted society, attached to models and comforts, controlled by money and personal power, divided in classes and levels of respectability, I think I would never do what he did. I think sometimes it could be great run away from all and stay alone in nature, without thinking about others judgments or needing to prove something. But just for few weeks. I would never be able to leave my family, my friends, my comforts, my life, completely.
I liked the quote “happiness is only real when shared”. The man is a social being, he needs other humans to talk, laugh, share, argue. In solitude he will lose his mind. For that reason I don’t understand completely Chris’s decision to leave his beloveds or don’t remain with hippies and live in an abandoned bus, alone, with only Nature around him, that could be wonderful and terrible at the same time.
The movie “Into the wild” by Sean Penn talks about the real history of Christopher McCandless, a young man that decides to leave his common life after graduating and spending his life into the wild, alone and free from modern society.
This movie can be related to our lives because Christopher can be considered a modern rebel in our society that with his choice decided to start living close to nature, searching freedom and things that and extraordinary emotions that a common man can’t try. So it can be considered as a role model to the bravest and strongest that who want to follow him.
As Christopher I think that our world is too much challenging and frustrating and sometimes all need to take a breath from this and take a break, detaching by those problems. I didn’t like in the film the fact that he said nothing to his parents and people in his family because he made them worried for months.
For me one of the biggest problem in our contemporary society is money because it can’t solve all our problems. There are a lot of families that don’t arrive at the and of the month and there are people that are full of money and they are also unhappy and dissatisfied by their own life. As Christopher said we must share to be happy and to make the others feeling better.
My favourite quote of Christopher McCandless is “I don’t want to know what time it is. I don’t want to know what day it is or where I am. None of that matters”.This means that the key to be happy doesn’t depend by the time, the day or the location, but it depends from what we do and from our important people (like parents or friends) close to us.
“Into the Wild” is the story of a young man, Christoper McCandless, who escapes from his materialistic family and capitalistic society, focused on corruption, money and deceptions, looking for happiness and freedom. The director Sean Penn, inspired by the homonymous book, reinterprets the story of Chris making a great movie on it. I love the environments of the wild America seen in the movie. Despite it I disagree with Chris’s choice of leaving his family and society for looking real happiness. It’s easy for any teenagers to escape from an unhappy world of a closed family where there isn’t dialogue and communication. The hard part is staying, understand that there are many ways to rebel and the Christoper’s one was the easiest and most dangerous way. His choice to escape is a sort of protest against the capitalistic society, but it isn’t useful for trying to change or improve it. Besides it, he had caused pain to his family and people who loved him, letting them without noticed of his position, situation and health. For this there is no virtue in his choice of escaping, but only adolescent naivety. I can understand that he was looking for a better life and better conditions in contact only with wild nature refusing any contact with man, but he isn’t a role model to follow, because if all man escape from problems it will be impossible to solve these: he had to stay in his country and he had to find solutions to change his corrupted society for the good of all.
This movie make me thinking about different things.
Indeed I found various Mc Candless’ values and ideals that could be related to our days.
I can say that sometimes I identify me in the character of Mc Candless, if I consider the way, the “moral courage” of the main character, in following the road He wanted go through it, not thinking to the others.
An example of this value that I have appreciated is his sort of spiritual rise and physical that purify entirely him from the mentality of the American capitalistic society, immerging himself into the wilderness.
All this to stay clear from falseness and hypocrisy by going onto the Alaska pristine lands.
And behind this, there another thing I think and believe: the final message that the movie (and book) want to leave.
We have to follow our dreams, TRUE ones, even if we have to struggle, to go against the grain, to sacrifice something we apparently need.
Certainly I don’t mean with this that we are allowed to do everything we want to, but it’s the concept that have to remain, as a message: I think we haven’t to give up our hope.
Of what I’m saying, in other words, is the concept of conformism.
It’s something that it is spread in all the world (Italy included).
In my opinion as long as we follow the crowd, we won’t never become real men.
It’s essential to focus only on the research of the fundamental values that constitute our main objective.
And so, all that nowadays we believe is an unattainable hope (utopia), actually it isn’t a distant dream, but it is something we must follow, catch it and make it their own.
The value, our value, is in the research and not in the achievement of our aim, because reaching it, means to end the value, the essence in us that “move” us.
I liked the movie, finding it very thought-provoking and full of inspiring quotes. That said I do not endorse Chris’ choice.
Some may think that what he did was brave, even saying that doing the same is their dream. They consider his journey the maximum expression of search for true freedom and youth rebellion. All I see in it though is selfishness and fear. He fled from a society he wasn’t able to cope with. He fled from people he couldn’t understand. He fled from a future that scared him. He fled from his life, and thus lost it.
Even though what he sees in civilization is a real and contemporary issue, he failed miserably at solving it. He opted for the most passive behaviour possible: the complete nullification of himself. He was a coward and once he had to face his problems he ran away hoping to become a man.
Little he knew that real men act. They deal, dodge, tear apart life’s problems. They shove them down life’s throat and victoriously rise, shining of their own light, savouring the acrid taste of glory, wildly gazing over the echo of their accomplishment, and truly live.
This film shows a possible choice of way of life after being graduated; in this aspect the story of this movie is related to us. In a month and an half from now, hopefully, we will have finished the high-school; in that moment I will probably reflect about the core of my life like as done Christopher McCandless, the protagonist of the film. Chris, after the ending of the studies, renounced to live in that society, especially in his family, where rule the hypocrisy and the real truth of the existence is hidden by the importance of the ‘appearance’. So Chris decided to take up a journey toward the Alaska without any money trying to reach a more sincere life far from the vices of his society. I share the idea of make a journey with only the necessary to live because you learn to adapt yourself in every kind of situations only on your own; so it could be a very important lesson of life but Chris did it in a way too extreme and thoughtless because he has underrated the power of Nature. I think that also our society in Italy has lost the importance of living in touch with Nature; the Progress in fact, like said many romantic philosophers and writers, depletes the imagination of the human and makes they more selfish and less spontaneous. So in my opinion having some experience in contact to Nature ,like a trip with a tent, help us to recover and get closer to the real dimension of the human being. The best quote of Chris in my opinion is :”If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed. “;this quote is linked with what I said before, in particular this quote highlited the critic of Chris on the society that is based mainly on the Reason that deletes the plenty of chances of our life.
Into the wild, by Sean Penn, is among my favourite movies: every time I watch it, I can really feel the same need of freedom of the protagonist, ‘cause the movie perfectly represents the com-plementary of the super technologized society in which we live. Starting from the plot, well adapted from the wide and complicated life of Christopher McCandless, everything is amazingly studied: the soundtrack perfectly fits the atmosphere of the movie, the script catches all the dif-ferent aspects of Christopher’s character, the sets really convey the beauty and freedom that the protagonist was looking for.
Even though the director is not used to this job (he is mainly an actor), I found some shot out-standing: like the first one, where the camera stays almost still, while Chris arriving in Alaska brought by a truck is showed just in a corner of the snow-white screen, in my point of view mean-ing that a single man is insignificant in the vastness of nature. Or the shot where Chris’s eating an apple on the road and he suddenly watches in camera, directly to the audience; it’s pretty rare to come across something like that and I found it a brave choice. Also the final long shot is stunning, starting from the detail of Chris’s dead face and zooming out until all the landscape around the bus is visible.
The first part of the movie in my opinion is better, while the second is a bit more boring, excep-tion made for the end. To see how he radically changed his life immediately after the graduation, leaving everything behind, both the things he hated, like his parents, and the ones he loved, the sister, makes me wonder whether I could do something like that; although the idea of starting over my life might seem exciting, the challenge requested would be too big and I would just feel overwhelmed by the thought of having lost everything I built and achieved.
Christopher’s view of the society as a corrupted system that enslaves men is perfectly sharea-ble and adaptable to our country and our times: now more than ever we rely on countless things which go beyond our control. Practically we are the cause of everything that happens, but we’re not able to control it. I also sometimes feel the desire to abandon the computer, the mobile and every comfort I have and live in the wild, to rediscover what being alive means, but I think I’ll nev-er be brave enough to take this step.
“No longer to be poisoned by civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild.”
Interesting how he calls the civilization a poison and how he considers himself so free to feel lost, like if he’s never been in such a state before.
In my opinion, Sean Penn’s “Into the Wild”, is a film that’s a bit difficult to be related to the life of a man who didn’t experience something similar to what the protagonist did.
The plot is drawn by the real story of Christopher McCandless. This young man, after his graduation, decided to run away from the society in which he lived because all that monotony and tediousness didn’t allow him to be really happy and to understand the real nature of the man.
For this reason he decided to escape and started a new life in which he was only with himself and his objective was reaching Alaska and going living there into the wild.
Personally I share McCandless’ ideal that man could reach happiness also without living in society and without using all the kind of comfort that we normally use.
Of course I share this ideal but I’m not sure of it because I’ve never tried living alone so much time as the protagonist of the film and also I’ve never tried to give away to all the comfort I have.
I think that this kind of social criticism is too much radical and probably nowadays the majority of men, included me, isn’t able to leave their normal life and their routine to start a new life into the wild. This because, by now, we are used to live following some rules and a model of behavior; so we are a bit scared of breaking them.
“Mr. Franz, I think careers are a 20th century invention and I don’t want one.” This quotation in my opinion explain perfectly the way of being of Christopher McCandless.
In this quotation we can understand that he was an anticonformistic and he wasn’t interested in having a social role because he preferred living just for the pleasure of living and understanding the real nature of the man.
This film is a great film because gives you many reason to think to the tedium of life in our society and in particular made me think a lot about the real rapport between men and nature; this rapport nowadays doesn’t exist.
I really appreciate this film also because of the protagonist; in fact I really liked the ability of the protagonist, Emile Hirsch, to involve the audience and making them feel the same feelings of him.
In my opinion this is an exciting film because gives you the opportunity to see something very radical that a young man did and also because the plot is full of mood swing for example the protagonist passed form a moment to another from a feeling of happiness to anger or from hope to sadness and frustration.
Sean Penn, the director, had to wait ten years to have the concession for the movie after the publication of the book. This is maybe a reason why the film is so exciting. The story talks about a young man, Christopher McCandless, who decided to leave his life, his rich family to start a journey into the wild, leaving from West Virginia to arrive in Alaska.
Meeting a lot of hippie people, he will take his message of freedom and love them. At the end he will die after eating a poisonous berry.
I really appreciate what Sean Penn did, in particular that he didn’t follow the chronology of the events, but he told the plot using flashbacks. Overall we could perfectly understand why Cristopher left his family, watching his relationship with parents and society.
In my opinion the movie was too slow, I like it because it was from a true story. If not, I would have found too much crazy his choice to leave everything in this way. I liked a lot the protagounist and Kirsten Stewart for her charm.
I don’t know how to relate the plot to my life… Sometimes I think to leave everything and go away for a couple of days without phone..but not like him all the life.
I think that maybe living with all those money, Cristopher thought that he had something to achieve with his own. But in my opinion he exxagerated. Now I think it’s difficult run away from your life in this way for the technology and no one I think would try to do the same if he feels good in brain. You can’t leave your parents like he did.
“Hey, listen, old man. Now, don’t psychoanalyze me, all right? Shut up. I’m taking you out to where we’re going. Where you going? I told you. We’re going nowhere!” I found it funny when he was only in his bus, because we understand that he was losing his mind, but at the same time he is happy about his life in that moment, far from his earlier stressed life.
Comment to “Into the Wild”
Often something strange happen, is something that can change our life and revolutionize our existence.
This is exactly the concept that Sean Penn the director of the film wanted to transmit us. “Into the Wild” is a movie about a young man in search of freedom. Emile Hirsch, the protagonist of the story, is looking to escape by human society to reconstruct a real relation with nature and to understand what really means be a man.
The movie taken by the homonymous book present a wonderful interpretation of Emile Hirsch that, in the end, even in the scene of his death continues to smile and be proud of his life. That moment appears full of different feelings. It is shown such as he wants to teach us that instead of the untimely death he, in his last years, lived deeplier than many older people that focus their life on futility or meaningless things create by human to corrupt him.
The interpretation of the film could give really different points of view, but we can concord on the fact that life do not became more important while you’re growing up and people don’t became wiser while the passing of the time; they simply change their minds and their priorities.
The meaning of the film is all based on these priorities.
We can change them and in this way change our life. We have to find the ones where we can recognize more our-self otherwise we can simply accept what others choose to us, living a life such somebody that had never lived.