T.C. of an O.J.

Disclaimer: If you’re planning to see Into the Wild, you probably shouldn’t read this. It might spoil the film for you!

Emile Hirsch plays Christopher McCandless, a jaded young man brimming with bitterness and distrust towards his parents and the world. After graduation from college, Christopher, who dubs himself Alex Supertramp for his travels, sets out on a journey towards Alaska. In Alaska, Alex feels he’ll finally live and experience life the way it was meant to be experienced before it was polluted by man. Just as Chris sees his father as an abusive tyrant, he sees Alaska as a Utopia where he can live autonomously in happiness.

However, from the beginning, Chris is unable to see how his family loves him. Although his father and mother frequently fight with each other, upon his graduation from college they proudly offer to pay for Chris’ graduate studies at Harvard and but him a new car. Their attempt at loving their son is flawed to Chris, even though he also has a younger sister who looks up to him.

Christopher is a driven young man. There is no doubt he’d be successful in the corporate world, yet the thought of business meetings and business suits nauseate him. Instead, his quest is fueled by this intense disgust for the world’s greed and materialism. His solution is to run away from it all, burning his identification, giving away all of his money, abandoning his car, and becoming a “tramp”, hiking, hitchhiking by car and rail, and rafting across the Western United States.

Into the Wild, a movie written and directed by Sean Penn based on a novel written about the actual Christopher McCandless, is a memorizingly heart-wrenching film. As Chris journeys across America his beard and hair grow long and messy, transforming him into Alex. For all of Alex’s hate for the world and its systems, he makes a fatal error by lumping the people trapped in this filth as part of the problem.

Alex’s quest is supposed to be about getting back into the wild, but while he is alone in it, he is almost always experiencing severe hardship. He fails to preserve a vital kill as meat that would be his dinner becomes infested by maggots, underestimates a river’s seasonal rise, and misuses his guidebook. But, the real trouble is in his heart, where Alex is a confused and lonely child who longs to be loved by his parents. While Mom and Dad have made mistakes, his own stubbornness and misdirected rebellion ultimately prevent it from ever happening.

Alex’s adventure doesn’t go as planned.

In stark contrast to Alex’s suffering in the wild is his time spent with the motley ensemble of characters on his pilgrimage. The friends that become part of his life are the memorable part of the adventure as the scenes with Wayne, Ron, Jan, Rainey, and Tracey find Alex having the most enjoyment getting to know these people. Whether by intent or not, the movie shows clearly that all of Alex’s good times are spent in the company of others. Despite the cauldron of discontent that bubbles beneath Alex’s surface, he is genuinely likeable and able to make a lasting imprint on the characters he meets. In turn, they do the same for him, although he mutes their efforts by maintaining his focus of his greater aspirations of Alaska.

In one scene, Alex sits atop a mountain with the elderly Ron, a lonely man who grows to love Alex so much he wishes to adopt him. Alex has just finished drawing Ron out of his bitter old man shell, getting him to climb up to the top and share the view with him. But, Alex takes this beautiful moment, one in which Ron explains forgiveness to Alex and pushes in aside. His thoughts no doubt turning to Alaska he tells Ron, “You don’t need human relationships to be happy, God has placed it all around us.” My wife groaned and nodded her head in disagreement as if to say, “No, don’t think like that, Alex!” but Alex’s stubborn resolve obliterates any promise the moment on the mountain had for Christopher McCandless’ life. As even the film later shows, Alex couldn’t have been further from the truth.

In fact everyone he meets on his way begs Alex to forgo his quest north, but Alex pushes on blindly. Jan, an old hippie traveler whose own relationship with Rainey was restored in part because of Alex, tearfully asks him “do your parents know where you are?” Sadly, Alex’s parents don’t know where he is and the uncertainty about their son’s life has brought them together while at the same time ravaging their lives with sadness and guilt.

Why does Alex keep pushing towards Alaska? Does he view autonomy with nature as the ultimate escape away from the “sick society” that turns him off? Does he want to proudly stand against society by foraging into the wild? No, it seems like he wants to run away from reality and stand in contrast to his parents. But as far as he runs, Alex can’t escape his bitterness.

Myself in Alex

As a teenager turning into a young man, I felt much the same Christopher felt. My stomach turned at the idea of becoming a working stiff for the man and I felt isolated and alone in a world where nobody loved me, or so I perceived. I took my parents for granted and used incidents where I felt they were wrong to justify writing them off and shutting down their future attempts to show me they loved me and relate with me. I spent most of my time and effort thinking up dreams of a world where I would be different and stand proudly alone, yet in doing so I was pushing people away that really cared for me by keeping everyone at arm’s length.

Luckily, I never considered Alaska as an alternative to the world around me and eventually found Christ while attending an on campus bible study. I always felt like there had to be an alternative to this cold, dark, sick world, but solutions I would come up with on my own didn’t really change anything or fill the void I still felt in my life. In Christ, however, I was finally able to take my misdirected rebellion and channel in into a funnel provided by God. I hope I never lose this rebellious distrust of the world that boiled inside of me as a teenager, however, I’m so thankful that God was able to refine this desire for non-conformity I had within.

It is so sweet for me to open the pages of the bible and see Jesus as the ultimate rebel with a cause, rebelling against the systems and religion of the times in order to bring all of humankind a meaningful and lasting alternative. I’m just sad that people like Christopher McCandless will never get to experience this too.

A Tragic Conclusion

What good are the breathtaking sights Alex saw on his trip? He can’t share them with anyone else! His time in the wild is spent fondly thinking back on the time spent with his friends. In Alaska, Alex wants to share his experiences with people. Without people the beauty and nature of Alaska seems useless.

In fact, Into the Wild is one long look back on the time Alex spent with people he has grown to love as he dies a miserable death isolated, alone, and hungry. At very end, on his deathbed, Alex doesn’t reflect back on the original purpose of his trip- the nature or the beauty he’s seen, instead he dreams of running back to his parents arms.

He learns some of life’s most difficult lessons too late. Christopher spends life pushing away people trying to experience happiness on his own, but only after actually trapping himself alone in the wilderness, with loneliness crushing him to death, does he realize “happiness is only real when shared”. Tragically, Alex is an example for us all. He, like most people, spends his entire life trying to run away from his parents. His story should be a warning to those that attempt the same race: we can never run away from our parents and the suffering we think they’ve caused us. If we write them off and refuse to love, in effect we become what we despised in the first place and with always take that deadly baggage with us- even all the way to Alaska.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 4th, 2008 at 11:52 am and is filed under Blogroll, Christianity, Jesus, Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.