I watched a movie last night that pissed me off. So Chris is upset at a movie, nothing new. It’s not like they are doing a remake of RHPS or anything… Oh wait, yes they are, spoke too soon…
But this one pissed me off because it tried to beatify something stupid. I’ve always said that if Teresa ever got tired of my shit and I ended up alone, I’d like to run off and live in the woods somewhere. Build a bunker and stock up enough to live the winters snowed in and isolated. So a few years back I read a few books about that kind of stuff and one of them was “Into the Wild” by John Krakauer. He’s a big mountain climber and all of that but this was the story about a kid who decides to take off and live in the wilds of Alaska. Sounded like a good story to me until I read this book. Chris McCandless was a rich kid who got caught up in college with the idea of world suffering and decided to punish Mommy and Daddy by disappearing and running off to live as a bum. He sends the remainder of his college fund to charity, loses his car, burns his pocket money and then lives for a couple of years as a bum in the southwest, stealing what he needs to survive. When he finally decides to go to Alaska, he sets out with inadequate supplies and no exit strategy other than make it to the ocean. He soon discovers that the melting snow from the mountains travels downhill toward him and soon the fields that he planned to cross to get to the ocean are marshlands. He should have died from exposure within a week but he found a hunter’s shelter that he set up as his new base camp. He lived just fine living the life of the tortured mind, happy to leave the world behind. Until things started going wrong.
He started running out of food because he didn’t know how to hunt. Not many hunters out there going after moose with a .22 cal rifle. He thought he’d live the entire year on a 10 pound bag of rice, whatever plants and berries he could find and whatever game he could kill with his 22 cal. When he realized how much deep shit he’s in and decides to head home he couldn’t cross the river because it was much higher than when he crossed it before the thaw. The movie portrayed him as master of his domain, living happily and exploring the area. If he was really this good, how then, would he miss a rope and pulley bucket system strung up across the river just half a mile from his camp? Oh the woods are a big place and I can understand not seeing something even only a hundred yards away through the trees but it was strung up across the river! How do you miss a thing like this? A little exploring might have saved his life! They think he either starved to death, ate the wrong seeds or ate the right seeds that had gone bad, both of the seed possibilities makes you starve to death. So in any case, if you are starving, how do you not hunt or fish any further than a half mile from your camp? Was he waiting for the animals to climb up on his plate? He was stealing supplies from nearby hunting camps so he was getting out from camp a few miles. Did he never think to go up/down river and look for a better place to cross?
No, he was a fucking idiot! You don’t go into the Alaskan Interior without the right gear. That gear should include a map, maybe a compass. And I don’t care how fucked up your home life was, your family at the very least deserves a phone call or a post card that says, “I hate you, I’m not coming home, don’t come looking for me.” If not his parents, he could have contacted his sister whom he claimed to love.
The movie portrays him as a lost soul, innocent and harmless. A brilliant kid who turned his back on society and technology but he was more of an average kid who excelled in certain areas, none of which included common sense or street smarts. They intentionally left out the constant thievery and the fact that he carried a pistol with him while living as an LA street bum. If I were living on the road I’d carry a gun too but they left that out to make the character more sympathetic. It’s much easier to feel sorry for the guy if he acts like Gandhi. The movie made it look like he lived on his own and shunned help but in the book he was always getting into some kind of trouble and begging for help and handouts. Maybe he shouldn’t have burned all that money? Maybe he could have bought the supplies he needed? Another thing the movie softened was the final note. His final diary entry said something like, “I’ve lived a happy life, God bless and goodbye.” Or something like that. The movie put that message on a large note on the side of the bus and zoomed out to show the message and then faded out. In real life there was a large note on the bus but the words were not of the final diary entry. It was a literal cry for help, “Help! Starving and trapped. This is not a joke. Please help!!!” It wouldn’t have been such a touching ending if they stuck to the truth would it? Another minor issue, all the music in the movie was by Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam. It fit perfectly because I fucking hate their sound and it always makes me think of dirty, smelly grunge rocker bums and I can’t stand them either. Whiney bitches!
So if you watch the movie you get a feeling of, “Awww, poor misunderstood kid got trapped and died. I’m so sad the bright young explorer died so young.”
But of you read the book you come out thinking, “What an asshole! He essentially committed suicide and I don’t feel bad for him! He treated his family and friends like shit and thought he knew it all. It’s a shame he wasn’t eaten by a bear thereby serving SOME kind of purpose in life.”
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