Away from life, into the wild

Rating: 9/10 (11 February 2008)

Enlightenment comes from experiencing. If you never had anything, how can you ever give up anything? I recently watched a movie that tells a totally opposite story. It was about a young Tibetan monk who walked away from the life of detachment and lived for a while like a normal person, fell in love, got married and had children ... until one day, he walked away again, back to the life of detachment and seclusion. On the contrary, Into the wild tells a story about a young man who try to run away from civilization and be alone with the nature.
Deep in the core of these two opposite stories lies the same bare naked truth of humanity. There are something one can never seem to escape no matter where you are and what kind of life you are living.
Here's our young hero, torn and tired of the inconsistency, viciousness and lies of his parents and the toll that it's taking on his conscience, decided to just walk away, far far away from everything as humanly as possible. He took on a symbolic journey to seek the absolute truth that's free from the contamination of human touch. He walked "Into the wild" with all of his arrogance and earnest, equipped with nothing but his stubborn grip and fascination on a place called Alaska, where true meaning of life can be found.
On some level, it reminded me of my younger self, and all the anguish and suffocation I experienced after the teen years. The time when we were old enough to supposedly bear the burden of decision making yet not quite experienced enough to weigh in all the choices. The time when life was all of a sudden upon us.
On a very personal level, quite strangely, this movie hit me hardest not with its depiction of the wild but the depiction of human interaction. To me, that's where it truly shines brightly, so brightly that it washed out the dark and lonely hours of "Into the wild".
This is not the kind of movie that gives you any closure. There's no triumph nor enlightenment. It present a slice of life as it is, charming and flawed like the main character. Contrast to young McCandless' bleak and cynical world view, you will only remember his bright and innocent smile, the warm sparkles in his eyes, the brief yet achingly beautiful moments of human interaction that he often abruptly run away from.
You may not necessarily learn anything from the main character, but you will definitely draw something truly valuable from his experience. Somewhere in a dark and obscure corner of the earth, there's a Chris McCandless lay underneath the stars, gazing on its vast tranquility, dreaming of his Alaska. For me, Chris McCandless didn't go "Into the Wild", he went into himself, searching for an idea, a moment of pure authenticity, something that had eluded him.