Into the Wild (2007) Review

 

Into the Wild (2007)

Thought I’d add another favorite to my little one year celebration.

Into the Wild is the true story about Christopher McCandles, aka Alexander Supertramp, and his adventurous journey to the heart of the Alaskan wilderness.

This is another film that helped shape the man I am today, defining a pretty big chapter in my life in my transition from high school to college. Chris is a young man, just graduated college with aspirations of forgetting most of the modernized world around him, minimalist in a way, and living off of what he has and the natural world around him. And he does just that, traveling all the way from Georgia to Alaska. It’s those dreams of manifest destiny, of the brief but meaningful relationships he makes along the way, those are what ground and give way for this film to be effective in not only telling a true story, but a profoundly beautiful and innocent tale of love and adventure. His journey of self discovery and sufficiency gives him the meaning and thrill his philosophical mind has always longed for and it’s inexplicably moving.

Done by Eddie Vedder, it also happens to have one of the best original soundtracks I’ve heard, really giving the film a sound and feel that sets it on its way.

The movie stars Emile Hirsh as the young, free-loving, and adventurous Alexander Supertramp, and he completely buys into the mindset and will of this inspirational but tragic individual. He makes you believe in the relationships, the journeys, and the growth you inevitably make throughout your life, because “happiness is only real when shared.” Which is what makes his unfortunate death so deeply saddening because his gradual decent and realization of what he’s done, sets in too late and he must become one with the very thing he sought out; alone and afraid.

Directed by Sean Penn (a shocker to me too) and based off the book of the same name by Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild is a story of wanderlust, but it’s also a cautionary tale about going into the unknown unprepared and alone.

Truly a freeing and life changing experience that gives way to its own personal feelings of such a journey.

9.6/10