Posted on Tue, Nov 27 2007 @ 19:06
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The One With "Into the Wild"

From the first scene, I knew I wasn't going to be watching Hollywood shit for two hours, but rather real life. And interestingly enough, the reason I knew it was not because Sean Penn crowned the head of that production, but of all things, because of my mother. My mom and I haven't had the perfect relationship over the years. Sometimes it was a pretty rocky one, actually, not at all like my relationship with my father (there is a reason why mom calls us "monozygotic twins" ). But there has always been a bond between us that made all our fights and arguments so stupid and unimportant in the long run that they could just as well be reduced to nothing. It is a bond that every real mother shares with her child, a bond that isn't severed after 9 months in the womb, a bond that once there, gives the woman a full right to call herself mother. And it was that bond that was present every time I would start talking to my mom about a problem and she would already know what I wanted to say, it was that bond that was present whenever I called her about something and before I even started to speak, she would say she had a dream about me the other night that already told her everything, and it really did; it was that bond that would prompt her to call me in the middle of the night when I wouldn't be feeling well and ask me if I was okay because, miles apart, she knew exactly what was wrong. It was that bond that I saw in Billie McCandless when she woke up in the middle of the night because she heard her son's voice, and immediately, I thought of my mother.



Like all the best films I ever stumble upon, this one was no exception in that I wanted to see it as soon as possible. The only problem in this case was that I had no time and when I finally realized a few days ago that I was slowly letting the opportunity slip through my fingers, I checked the cinema website and found that the screenings for the film were now reduced to one per day, which means it was probably my last week to see it. I wasn't surprised. After all, it didn't really strike me as a blockbuster. No erotic nakedness, no Orlando Bloom, no special effects or plotless plotlines… in other words, nothing to draw the attention of the average teenybopper or the rest of the larger portion of today's audiences. But still, it was a rude wakeup call when I realized that I myself almost missed it. naturally, in spite of knowing I would be insanely tired, I decided that last night was my best chance to go see it once and for all straight after work. And so I did.



I'll admit, I had known nothing of the true story of Chris McCandless before I watched the film, in fact, I wasn't even sure just how true it was, reason for it being that, again, I simply had no time to devote to research like I would normally do. All I knew was that Sean Penn, one of (my) most respected gems in movieland was making this film and what it was all about, and from the brilliant trailer that spoke volumes to me, I knew I had to see it (in case you missed it, these were my three reasons why). As it turns out, Penn approached the McCandless family and waited for 10 years for them to finally approve the project as he refused to have it done without their blessing. He also retraced Chris' footsteps and tracked down almost all the people he had met in real life during his wanderings, not to mention he shot the film entirely on location, including Alaska (yes, he shot it on exact location, in Alaska). But that's Sean Penn for you; you wouldn't really expect anything less, would you? The challenge was how to transfer Chris' theological, emotional and spiritual odyssey onto the big screen, how to tell his story?



Bus 142, or "the magic bus" as it is was named by Chris, has become a pilgrimage destination for hundreds of people over the years, and after he had died there, probably having starved to death rather than poisoned as the film suggests, many tried to retrace his journey and understand his reasons and motivations, but until this very day, the magic of his story is that it remains a mystery. Christ speaks differently to every single one of us as the journey every one of us must take to fulfillment and the reasons behind it are different. A rich kid from a broken home goes to rediscover himself is probably one of the world's biggest clichés at least because it prompts the inevitable sarcastic response – well, he wants to get his little rich hands dirty in the real world because he's tired of daddy's money. But in reality, there is so much more. Yes, he was wealthy, yes, he was from privileged background, but no, I don't think he necessarily wanted to discover himself, in contrast to popular belief or what the trailer suggests. I think he knew exactly who he was; he was a strong person with a strong character. His problem was not with himself but rather with the world around him, which he saw has deteriorated to such a low point that people in it forgot that what was really important in life was other people. People were so concentrated on material desires that they neglected to satisfy their basic emotional needs. People forgot the meaning of dreams, of happiness, of love; they have forgotten what life was truly about, they have forgotten how to live. His image of the real world may be bleak, but the reality of it is that this is exactly what things are like, and what's even worse, every single one of us is guilty of what Chris has charged us with and unlike him, whose self-discovery was bound to end in death, we still have a journey to make and the responsibility of not making it as short. The other even more ironic part is that Chris himself is guilty of that very crime, as he realizes in the end of the film. You can't fight one extremity with another. You have to blend somewhere in between.



Chris' actions were selfish in more ways than one, and it is that selfishness that made his journey all the more profound because only when you realize how selfish he was when he embarked on the journey, do you realize how far he's truly come. The average human being cannot drop everything, erase his past and set out on a journey that will claim his life because we are bound by social laws that Chris took his time to realize. "Happiness is only real when shared," he wrote shortly before he died when he finally realized that he was going to die alone and the true essence of life is to share your joys and your pains with other people. He realized that he needed people to survive, he realized that it is our obligations to the people we love, our only beacons of light in this bleak world, that make us survive the trials of day-to-day existence. A human being cannot exist on his own, but as a child who has seen pain and suffering and has retreated into his own world in a relatively young age, he never bothered to learn that lesson and only when he was about to die, alone, did he understand that what he was running from was what he needed to fix rather than whatever it was he was running towards. But… like my favorite Slayer once said, "Life is a song we don't get to rehearse." There are no second chances.



He'd destroyed his old identity before he embarked on his quest and gave himself a new name because he wanted to be a new person. He understood that a name defined us almost more than anything else, and he understood that the spirit that was trapped in his corporeal body, the essence of who he was, needed a new name to set itself free. But that attempt to severe ties with the people in his life was already a bad omen, particularly if one takes into account the fact that the people he met along the way, drifters as they may have been, all had company; they thrived and survived because of their company. The only person who did not, Chris reproached for that very thing. It was a rather interesting confrontation because he was confronting himself rather than Ron Franz. The same thing he accused Franz was draining life out of him would eventually kill him in that bus in Alaska. At that time he still didn't understand that in order to live a life, one must not only allow oneself to live, but make sure one did not live alone. In today's world, people grow less and less concerned whether or not they touch lives, whether or not they affect other people, whether or not they have human ties to this world. We're too busy with everyday things to think about that, but the fact is that we are not who we are unless we reflect in others. Loneliness is the scariest thing there is, and these were the emotions that filled the pages of his diary in his final days; fear, loneliness, despair. He felt trapped although he was in the middle of nowhere, the entire wilderness at his feet. He was trapped in loneliness. "What if I were smiling and running into your arms?" he wonders before he dies, thinking of his family, "Would you see then what I see now?"



Chris rejected comfort and stability; he claimed these very things prevented us from chasing our dreams, truly living our lives and realizing who we are. He was right. He was right people preferred to remain in unhappy situations rather that venture out into the world and see what awaited for them there because, however unhappy, these situations were safe; they were familiar territory, and the unfamiliar frightens us even if it could be better. It takes a whole lot of strength to give the new and unfamiliar a chance, even if your life, so to speak, sucks beyond the imaginable. But as Chris is gently reminded, we need some stability, some comfort sometimes. We cannot exist without it. It is not really about the presence of money, but rather the acknowledgement that man is not invincible, that his endurance has limits, that he does need support. He took the radical approach and it was the wrong one.



The first part of Chris' journey was wonderful and fun, but a large portion of it was not due to the things he saw, but the people he was able to share it with. Although unaware of that fact, he continuously relied on people, whether for employment, or transportation, or companionship, or advice, it doesn't really matter, but his life was interlaced with other lives, and so he thrived. Then came the second part of his journey, in which he cultivated not the social needs, but the selfish ones – the nature of the beast, so to speak, the Call of the Wild. The things he saw in Alaska are indescribable. Hell, my dream is to spend a month at least in the Alaskan wilderness, away from civilization, just become a part of nature, of life, of the wild. Chris realized that dream, and in those few months, he lived a life more profound than most people ever get to experience. But then the third part of his journey began. Suddenly, he wanted to come back. He never intended to stay there for all eternity; whether you choose to call it a journey of self-discovery or purely coming of age, it doesn't matter, but he always intended to eventually go back. In the third part of his journey, he realized he no longer could. Nature overwhelmed him and people were not there to help him. He was utterly and completely alone.



His misleading Call of the Wild was his doom. He followed Jack London, and he followed Buck, but he forgot one very important part of Buck's self-actualization process: as tempted as he was, he did not answer the Call until John Thornton died, until his bond to that human being was severed by a hand other than his own, and even when he did, he didn't go into the wild alone, but joined his pack. Chris read the book as he wanted it to be rather than as it was and ignored some very important facts. His journey was complete when he himself died; his setting of impossibly high goals for himself doomed him into learning all life's lessons and exploring all life's realities in an incredibly short period of time. In his travels, he came to know everything one needed to know, and there really was nothing else to learn; nothing important anyway. In his death, he reached peace. Chris died with a smile on his face not so much because he was happy but because he realized what most of us spend a lifetime chasing and never find – he realized what happiness was. As he himself once said, "It is important not to be strong, but to feel strong." To a large extent, he lived his life to the fullest. In his twenty four years, he was loved, he lived, and he reached out for his dreams and grabbed them. He touched life; he touched people; he changed lives. Even after his death, his effect on the world proved to be much greater than he would have ever envisioned.



Once again, I've been going on and on about the message in the film, but there is just too much to say. There is till too much to say. Hell, I have an exam on Friday and I really should be reading neuropsychology now instead of writing a blog, but I just needed to get at least some of my thoughts out. If the read is too long, go to a different blog .



The film itself is fantastic. It's already winning minor awards, but with the official award season fast approaching and it being released right on time for consideration, I think if they have any brains left in that Academy, there is at least one Oscar in its future. My money is on at least one of the following: Best Director, Best Actor, Best Cinematography, Best Adapted Screenplay or Best Soundtrack/Score. Honestly, they all deserved it, especially Sean Penn. I want him to get Best Director because he clearly put his life and soul into this film and because he is one of these rare people who can show life in its purest rawest essence that would grab at your heart and make it bleed. But… bearing in mind it's the Academy Awards, either he gets it for directing or writing, I don't really care as long as he does. The visuals of this film are breathtakingly stunning. Naturally, Alaska, so no need to elaborate (unless you've been living on another planet all your lives), but nonetheless, this film gives us the chance to look at the world through Chris' eyes, see what he sees, experience the beauty of nature and freedom in its true essence the way he does, and the sheer power of it honestly brought tears to my eyes. The soundtrack is another gem in this film. There was no doubt in my mind when I read the rumors Eddie Vedder signed on as soon as Sean asked him, not even caring what the film was about. They have done wonderful collaborations before and honestly, I thought it would be interesting to hear his take on this theme, but nothing prepared me for what I heard. I think that as soon as the film started, I was like, "I'm getting that soundtrack!" I have never been a huge fan of Pearl Gem although I listen to them, but this is rather different from the things Vedder usually did and it is absolutely brilliant. The songs are so meaningful and strong, but the music is mellow and soft, very soulful, mostly un-rock-like, and his voice is perfect to deliver the lyrics. Of course, I downloaded the soundtrack as soon as I came home last night. Although it's incredibly short, it is gorgeous. I could listen to it over and over again (already have ).



All in all, I urge everyone to go and see this film. I don't know if I can get it on DVD because, like Sean's previous masterpieces along the lines of "Mystic River" and "21 Grams", the impact of the first viewing is unrepeatable, so no it's not really your average DVD you may watch here and there some more times. But nonetheless, this film will change your lives, the way you view life and it will change you. It is a must-see, an essential experience. I cannot say that what Chris did everyone must do, especially those who have read the book or seen the film and have an idea of what he was searching for and what he's fund, but if one wishes to do it to rediscover the primal Call hidden in all of us, I say do it, go for it; it will make you a better person. Honestly, I wish I was in a position to do it. Regardless, I have seen the film, I already ordered the book, just still waiting for it to arrive (I swear, it takes ages sometimes!), and I can't wait to read it as soon as I have the time. In the meantime, I advice again, go and see this film. I can't imagine it would be long before it's out of cinemas altogether, and it will be a missed opportunity like no other.



Here is a link to the trailer.



And finally, I want to finish up with my favorite quote from Jack London's "The Call of the Wild", which (incase you still haven't guessed from the title, was the main inspiration for the whole quest):



"...There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes to the soldier, war-mad on a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight. He was sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of Time..."

Mood: Awed
Listening to: Eddie Vedder - Guaranteed