I just watched this movie last night.
Unfreakingbelievable!!! One of the most touching films I have seen in my entire life.
I caught myself on many occasions "hmm"ing to what one of the narrators were talking about.
Talk about a film that goes out trying to make you about how society is and just the human soul in its searching..
<edit…what the hell!? I don’t even understand that sentence…>
If you haven’t had the opportunity to see, I highly suggest it!!
I’ve thought of seeing the movie, I read 2/3rds of the book and developed an intense disliking for the main character.
I read the book when it came out but haven’t seen the movie. I really wanted to but kept forgetting. I guess I’ll have to rent it.
I remember when the book came out I and my hiking buddies would discuss it endlessly, pondering whether the guy was a hero or a fool, what strategy we would have taken if we’d been in the same position etc.
Eventually I met a guy who talked about how in his early 20s he bummed around the country with an old beat-up car taking crappy jobs just long enough to move on to the next place. He totally reminded me of Chris McCandless.
I haven’t seen the movie. I might loosen up and see it someday – it was filmed locally, which is rare, so it would be fun to see in that respect. However, I have this intense (some might call it “knee-jerk”) reaction to the movie. I don’t want to support it, just like I don’t want to support Wal-Mart.
I did read the book when someone gave it to my husband. Then I made him give it away again – at that point it wasn’t something I wanted lying around my house for my then young-teenage son to read. Like many Alaskans, I think the book glorifies behavior that is either overtly suicidal or just plain stupid, and as the mother of a young male, that scares me. The bus now attracts “pilgrims” who put themselves in danger by trying to reach the bus – there is a debate over whether it should be hauled out to eliminate the “attractive nuisance” aspect, or whether people would still try to go to the place anyway.
Chris McCandless was a troubled young man, and I feel sorry for him and those who loved him. But I don’t condone what he did, and I don’t want to see other people venture out into the wilderness unprepared, on a voyage of self-discovery that ends in another unnecessary death. As a local search and rescue volunteer, I’ve already been out on one search for a missing young male who took some camping gear and “a bag of rice” with him. (That one turned out ok, luckily; the young man was alive.) McCandless had lots of time and many opportunities to save himself, and he either didn’t want to live or couldn’t figure out how to get help, even though he was within a few miles of several cabins and close enough to civilization that if he’d lit a big signal fire, someone would have noticed. He didn’t have to starve to death out there. (And Jon Krakauer intentionally ignored scientific evidence that Krakauer’s theory of McCandless accidentally poisoning himself on toxic seeds is not true.) McCandless shouldn’t be elevated to near-sainthood, and I think that’s what the book and movie try to do.
…
well…considering I had never heard of either the book or the real person before watching this movie last night, I can’t really say much besides that it was really well made.
walking in HDSarah’s shoes, I would probably have passed on this one also…search and rescue is a tough thing…my hats off to you.
I watched the movie being only vaguely aware of what it was about, but remembering a Dateline story about it (again, vaguely) and so knowing how it would end. I took the movie to be more about the journey than the outcome. At the end, I found myself just staring at the blank screen, thinking. Pretty powerful stuff.
I think the makers of the film did a good job of letting the story tell itself, without feeling the need to tell us whether we should think he’s a hero or a fool. Not entirely sure which way I’m leaning.
I find myself affected by my friend who read the book and reviewed it by seething that the main character was an idiotic kid who needlessly and selfishly broke his parents’ hearts!
She declined to see the film on that basis.
I have a problem with unhappy endings, and despite my having greater sympathy for the concept of spiritual odysseys, I’m not sure I want to see it.
Well said Sarah, I think he did not do his home work and was a troubled young lad, at that age I was myself. I’ve done several stints " into the wilde" and they all turned out well but I spent long periods of time on the “what Ifs” and plans A ,B and C, and departed feeling that I was as prepared as I could have been and with the proper gear to support me. I mean heading into the bush with only a 22 cal. rifle and basically no food, I had fun on my trips and often executed plans A,B and C. The same goes for extended ocean voyages. I would lie there night after night imagining what if this shroud parted, if the rudder broke, severe enjury, A,B and C plans executed.
The book does not treat him with kid gloves. I suspect that the movie depends more on emotional fol-de-rol than fact.