I didn’t know a lot about this film before I had it delivered to my mailbox. I knew it was a coming of age story about a man bent on going to Alaska. In fact I didn’t even read the synopsis until after I watched it:
Sean Penn directs this feature based on best-selling author Jon Krakauer’s true story of a young man who gives up everything to lead a solitary life in the wild. Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch), a middle-class college graduate, abandons his safe existence to trek across the harsh yet beautiful terrain of Alaska. William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden co-star, along with Catherine Keener, Vince Vaughn and Hal Holbrook (in an Oscar-nominated role).
Upon viewing it I had my soul tugged at again. Memories flooded my mind in such a way that I didn’t have time to grab onto any thing solid. I gladly allowed myself to get caught up in the rapids of my mind that was sparked through familiarity in a film.
Christopher’s life was a facade that he wished to break from. Anything that reminded him of the false reality his family created he wanted nothing to do with including his own identity. Money was tainted, names were lies, and every part of him wanted to break from the stench and become his own person on his own terms in his own way.
We all need our personal journey to discover who we are away from the people who raised us. To forgive life for painting lies onto our canvas until we’re ready to see the flaws underneath is definitely an sobering experience. Once we can accept those flaws and see their purpose, we can then realize and understand our own selves and begin to perfect and strengthen who we are..
I was raised in Alaska and my father took us to the states near the end of my brother and my school careers. I felt ripped away from a land that was my home. A place I watched grow. A place laced with so much beauty, innocence and what felt like magic. I knew the feelings of brotherhood and belonging were going to be left behind once we got into that car and hit the Alcan Highway that led to the Lower 48.
A call back to Alaska rang into my dreams each night I was away. The majestic mountains and land that sometimes you’d happen across and feel you were the first human to lay eyes on it and explore.
My brother and I would create these fantastic adventures to escape our own home life. We’d leave at the crack of dawn and return just shy of bedtime. We’d return with memories of building rafts, cutting paths in the wild, building forts, braving windstorms, blizzards, white outs, wild animals, and the dangers of seemingly gentle terrain.
It was a culture shock to find out that while I was learning survival skills in elementary school, being taken miles into the mountains by foot in the middle of winter with my class for a week- kids down in the states were busy bouncing balls and learning their state history through text books.
School was closed up there once it hit -30, even though we’d push our way through waist deep snow for weeks before, and my first winter in the NW… school was closed for a week because an inch of snow fell.
When I turned 20 the call of the wild was so strong and the opportunity arose, so I left everything behind and went back for a whole new series of adventures, equally fascinating and inspiring.
This of course isn’t about *my* life. The film was a decent story of a man who enters into adulthood in a modern world while trying to break away from any thing that would cause him dependency on the society around him. He had to learn his strengths and limitations on his own terms, in his own way. By doing this he could have his epiphany and return to a waiting world with more insight, understanding and wisdom than he ever could have obtained should he had stayed put and ignored the betrayal and disgust he felt towards his parents. This story is also about his sister’s understanding of why he left, her bond with him and her own growth by imagining his journey because his communication is non-existent.
Although this isn’t a feel good movie of the year, it does prompt you to look around and re-evaluate your own issues, puts them in perspective and then nudges you to step out of your own comfort zone a little and approach the world in a slightly different way.
Current Mood:
Amused
