Beware of the Bus!

Rating: 7/10 (30 December 2010)

This was an intelligent, interesting and well put-together film, despite the subject matter, based very closely on the short life and death, in 1992, of an idiot. It starts with a young man, Christopher McCandless, heading off into the Alaskan wilderness in the depths of winter, with all his kit in a back-pack. He crosses a small stream and comes across an ex-Fairbanks city bus parked in the middle of nowhere. It is never explained how the bus got there, but it has previously been inhabited. He makes it his base. The film then flashes back to tell the story of how he got here. Despite an unhappy childhood - his parents were more interested in squabbling than child raising, he does extremely well at college and is about to go off to Harvard Law School. However, he gives all his saving to Oxfam, and vanishes becoming a hippie. He travels around most of America, and meets lots of people, most of whom are nice to him, though he usually walks out on them. He develops an idea of going to Alaska, and eventually gets there. On the way, free-riding on a freight train, he is caught and beaten up by a guard for "jeopardising the company's liability insurance"! Meanwhile, his parents and sister are frantically worried about what has become of him. Back in the wilds, he lives off game, and the few supplies he brought with him. However, the game runs out, and after a killing a moose which goes rotten before he can preserve it, he tries to live off edible plants. This doesn't work out, so he plans to return to civilisation. However, it is now spring, the stream is a fast flowing river which he cannot cross, so he starves to death. His body is found a couple of weeks later. Whilst sympathetic to him and his desire to get away from materialism and hollow relationships, the film pulls no punches over the man's general stupidity in risking his neck in a way which is going to cause trouble for other people.
The message generally was that living wild in the wilderness is not as pleasant as it looks.