Very fine movie, disturbing theme

Rating: 8/10 (6 December 2008)

I have not read the book so this is the first impression of the story through the movie. I recognize in Penn a director who continues to mature, grown and learn his craft. I don't want to focus on the beauty of the wilderness or deserts or ocean fronts. That is a distraction for me. What haunts me and what others have commented on is whether the risks that Chris takes is worth the journey. Clearly he is torn inside and has internalized much of his family angst. He is the unexpected black sheep and at the most unusual moment, just after graduating High School he bolts from his family without ever contacting them again. Period. As others have pointed out, if he had it in mind to punish his parents because he rejected the lies that they lived life by then how to explain his (ignoring) his dear sister who loved, adored and clung to him for strength and support? Clearly Chris was above average in intelligence but it seems to me that he was unwilling to leave his adolescent and somewhat romantic boyhood behind and enter manhood with a full and vigorous grappling. Instead he runs away to find something in himself. Why is he drawn to Alaska of all places? What is, after all, Alaska: the most remote continental State, farthest he can remove himself from his parents, the most totally wild and untamed place and what he discovers only at the end, also one that can be the most dangerous place to "go it alone" in.
We do not get a sense that Chris understands what drives him, what his obsessions for obliterating his past are. He cannot live with his real name, he adopts a false persona. How odd. He cannot face his parents or his sister and include them in his withdrawal. To me that smacked of selfish and childish thoughtlessness. But, just as clearly he is drawn inwards to find a truth that he can live with. At the very end he finds it but by then the cold, impersonal, heartlessness of "nature" has closed off more than his escape. He is doomed to die with his insight. Knowing at the very end that just being happy by himself is not enough and that this happiness, this peace with ones self has to be shared in order for it to have meaning took him so very long to learn; what is so sad is that he paid no attention to that lesson all those long months he ran from his family. He kept getting the same lesson presented to him over and over again.
Those he kept company with acted with the intention of sharing and loving each other. All he had to do was slow down just enough to appreciate what they were mirroring and showing him. Had he done that he could have achieved that satori much earlier and not foolishly placed himself in such a ridiculous hazard so as to fall so deeply. His naive and displaced trust into the beauty of nature, of the goodness in nature, did not protect him from his own folly.
I should read the book I suppose. The film is quite sad when you see how unnecessary the risk taking, how obvious the insights were. But, some of us are inflamed with such a burning need to run, to flee what is painful, to judge others as having failed us. Had he returned with those insights...that is what we are left wondering at the end.
Powerful performances are what we expect and in Chris, Rainey, Jan and Ron we have solid characters that hold the film together. It is a moving and powerful film but ultimately so sad.