Jackass, Prophet, or Something In Between?

I watched Into the Wild last night. This will be a fairly spoiler-laden commentary on the film, so if you haven't seen it and don't know this guy's story, you should probably stop reading... now.



Anyway. To briefly summarize, this is the story of a kid (new college graduate) that takes off and bums around the country with little money, meeting people and trying to "take it all in" to a certain extent. I do not know the degree to which liberties were taken from the "real story" by the film's producers, so I am going to discuss the film as a stand-alone story, without regard to what may have "really happened".

At first, the main character (Chris) bugged the hell out of me. He reads Thoreau and wants to give up all his earthly possessions and live "pure" as Thoreau did, and to further this goal he gives thousands of dollars to OXFAM and heads for the hills.

As most college graduates can tell you, college kids are often idiots. They stumble upon a work of literature, or art, or historical account, and act like the rest of the world hasn't already experienced this "amazing discovery". It is insufferable and one of the few drawbacks of providing an education. Most kids who go through this phase grow out of it, and realize that yes, The Call of the Wild is a great book. Yes, Dostoevsky is a great writer. But you have to add something new to the analysis--a far more difficult task than just "appreciating" the author--to be relevant.

Chris first comes across as nothing more than a whiny, self-involved brat. The film attempts to paint a sympathetic back-story--his parents are assholes--but since everybody butts heads with their parents, it rings a little hollow as an excuse for his behavior.

Later, he becomes a little less obviously jerky, and you do come to believe he really does think that living a ramblin' man life of poverty is the key to happiness. He is pretty happy despite being knocked around by railroad bulls and squeezing through drainage pipes. But the underlying purpose of his travels remains a dissatisfaction with his parents and with "consumerism".

I realize I've gotten a bit off track, because the anti-consumerist attitude was what I initially meant to talk about. The thing about anti-consumerism is that while I fully believe that a healthy dose of moderation is important, like any other ideology, anti-consumerism is extremely stupid when taken to the extreme. It's great that HE can go bumming around the country, working as much as he needs to get by. But someone has to build the grain mill he works at. Someone has to run the fast-food restaurant he (very briefly, in the film) works at to save money. People build the roads, and the cars in hitches with, and so forth. It is naive and insulting to use these tools to achieve your anti-consumerist goals, while backhanding those who provide them as "ignorant" and "superficial".

Furthermore, I take issue with the idea that, survivability aside, everybody should live simply. It is a waste of human possibility to have everybody living in a log cabin, getting by off the land. We have the ability to design and plan massive skyscrapers; to study and manipulate genetics; to write and paint and sculpt truly amazing works of art. If we all give up the tools to do those things, we are dong a disservice to our species.

As far as the film goes, it doesn't come out and push these "live simply" virtues to the degree that I attack them. It is never obvious that Chris wants others to live this way, but that he is doing it himself as part of a search for something bigger. But the film--until the last half hour--makes him into a hero for "kicking off the establishment" and the implication is that he is a role model for that reason.

Of course (Spoiler Alert Again! For Real This Time!) he dies because of his ramblin' man attitude. He starves to death in the cold nowhere of Alaska (the film implies that he mistakenly eats paralytic berries, but in real life it seems that he just plain starved). He realizes at the end that "happiness is only real when shared" and tries to go back to society, only to get trapped. It is a bummer, but how much sympathy can I really have? At multiple points in the movie he is offered friendship and family, and he turns them down to continue his solo adventure.

Overall, I suppose this was a good movie. It clearly left me thinking about a number of issues. And as the stand-alone story of this guy's misguided life, it does a great job as a film. As a "message movie" I'm not so sure how it fares; the message is muddled and unclear--if it's "Chris McCandless was right!" then it's crap. If it's "he died finding out his worldview was wrong" then it shoves that in a bit late to be effective.

Anybody have any thoughts on this? If you even read this far down?

And yes, I know he went to my high school. Graduated 10 years before me in 1986! He died right around the time I was starting at Woodson.