An inspiring story told to near perfection.

Rating: 10/10 (14 July 2011)

In a move people consider selfish and moronic, Chris McCandless (Hirsch) abandons all of his money, possessions and relationships as he ventures out to live off the land for a few years. He bemoans what he perceives to be the trappings of money and modern society, and the propensity for people to blindly hurt each other. He reasons that by being largely by himself and surviving on the bare minimum, he will find the truth and happiness that evade people for a lifetime.
The people like me who love this film find what Chris did inspiring and life-changing. For much of our lives we are slaves to money, working pointless careers just to buy things that, when all is said and done, are meaningless and unnecessary. Chris not only had the prescience to see the emptiness these things would bring, but the rare courage to escape them.
I have seen many, many movies and I have yet to find one encompassing the depth and beauty so brilliantly displayed by Into the Wild. It masterfully immerses the viewer in a deep philosophical place where we are forced to reflect on what it is we truly value in life, what truly makes us happy. Though it can be quite sad at times, it has a profoundly uplifting quality to it, one that is rarely conveyed by movies these days.