I read Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer about two months ago, I think, and finished the book wondering if Chris McCandless was a brazen adventurer who met some bad luck or whether he was an arrogant tramper who could have saved himself with more careful planning. I decided that he had been well-intentioned but had gone too far in denying support, from communications systems, food rations and maps. After all, as the author pointed out, he could have made it over the river had he used a map showing a ranger station 2km down stream. Instead, we all know he turned around and made some more fatal errors living off the land, biding time until he could walk out on his own. The dream ended in gaunt tragedy in the wild.
I watched the movie last night and changed my mind. This is a case, I think, where the film is better than the novel. Is ay this because the film, being visual, is so much more convincing. The carefully filmed scenes of mountain chains back dropped by pink sunsets, of the Colorado River flanked by terracotta-coloured rock walls, add a whole new dimension to my understanding of McCandless. It was like, “Aha, so that’s what he was after.” The infinite beauty of untamed wild, of scenery, of scenes illuminated by sunlight and not by neon.
Part of the McCandless mystery, like that of Jeffrey Eugenides’ Virgin Suicides, is that we’ll never know whether or not young Chris made fatal errors or was too arrogant in his quest for the wild that he orchestrated his own demise. Maybe he never intended to make it out alive; we’ll never know. But watching the film adaptation and having the detailed research and analyses of the book certainly draws me in as a captive wonderer who’ll never know what happened, but who longs for more clues. After the visual argument of beautiful coastlines and barren arctic beauty, I’m now more convinced that the beauty was intoxicating, convincing the young ex-academic that all can and would be solved with surrender to the larger beauty and organization of nature.
I for one fully give myself to the comforts of civilization, knowing that solitude and self-sufficiency are not my fortes, at least in terms of basic survival, nourishment and shelter. Love is way better and love must be shared.

Labels: love, movies