A rare pearl: when the word fails to translate emotion

Rating: 10/10 (3 April 2009)

It's difficult and limiting to review such an emotionally engaging movie: it's a movie that can only be lived and lived again, the viewer just has to let it penetrate into his soul, mind and body. It's a movie that empties you in order to let you be reborn to a new life, at least to a new perception of what life and happiness are, and what has nothing to do with them. The depth and intensity of the experiences lived by Chris, as much extreme as the lands he visits (which provide an ideal and spectacular scenario for them), give evidence of such anxiety of life and truth, which go beyond the mistakes made by the young boy. Chris is, of course, a victim of an age which makes you believe the necessity to pursue the ideal, in an absolute way, never considering the opposite necessity to come to terms with real life, often hostile, misleading, which provides false values of materialistic happiness, but from which escaping is not always the most constructive attitude. However, his escape will prove to be almost therapeutic to him, since only at the very end of his physical, but also spiritual, and very painful, journey, will the young boy be able to understand the preciousness of true human relations, those which make you long for a human being you can share happiness with, as well as any other human feeling. The emotionally powerful soundtrack by Eddie Vedder helps to let the movie enter, gently but inexorably, into the very inner core of your soul, stirring such strong emotion inside, that the viewer finds it difficult to translate it into words. The word, however powerful and deep, fails when trying to rationalize the strong emotional engagement: you just have to allow yourself to be overcome by it and leave words aside, as too limited and limiting. It's one of those movies which really gets under your skin and cannot but alter your vision of life, forever. A pure and rare pearl within the cinematography of this century, and, I would say, of all times.