This is a life-changing experience

Rating: 10/10 (19 June 2014)

When I watched this, I was sitting in my barracks in Afghanistan. I had to keep pausing this and going out to walk the tiny FOB we had there, just to take in what I had watched. I even went on two missions before I had finished it the first time, getting into combat during the intermissions. Believe me when I say, this movie was affecting my life more than what was going on around me, and that is no small feat, given I was in a war-zone.
There is no small amount of 'go back to nature' movies out there. Some are downright disdainful of the urbanized world. This movie isn't that. It is a meditation on the life a real man, who abandons his upper- middle-class career trajectory to become a tramp and eventually live in deep Alaska for awhile. He learns a great deal along the way.
Transcendentalism runs deep in the American psyche. Though we ignore it, that theological position is what drove the creation of many schools of though, including non-violent protest (ie Gandi and MLK). This man takes up the task set by Thoreau in 'Walden' and expands on it with the new quintessential American thought - the road, but he doesn't stop with these things. He learns one of the most powerful lessons I have ever had the pleasure of observing, and it is merely a scribble at the end.
One other thing about this movie: the music is fantastic. Eddie Vedder has some of his best work in this, most of which (I would dare say) is better than anything he did in Pearl Jam. Also, the cinematography is so well done that it ought to be used as an example of how to film such movies.