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Lucky me caught a mild cold this week, so I had a couple of days off work. In between sleeping, making soup, and taking herbal remedies, I watched some movies. One of them was Into the Wild, the story of Christopher McCandless, aka Alexander Supertramp. While it was a fantastic film, with great actors - Hal Holbrook who plays Ron is particularly brilliant - and gorgeous cinematography, I haven’t felt that angry or sad about a film in a while, or more correctly, about the main character. What a tragic, untimely end to a young life full of such potential. Clearly he was a very intelligent young man, but he seemed to lack common sense. Who goes into the Alaskan wilderness in early spring, ill-equipped and unprepared? Or did he really think he was invincible or able to do the impossible, as one scene seemed to suggest? If this was the case, one can only imagine how he felt following the devastating failure of the moose shooting.

Sure, he had some family baggage (who doesn’t?), and he was definitely rebelling against “society”, but I had trouble fully understanding his motives for cutting himself off so completely from his family. He appeared to love his sister, but he never contacted her. Not even a phone call or postcard to say he was OK, and yet he wrote to other people he met during his travels. He wasn’t antisocial, but he didn’t appear to need relationships either. He seemed to exist quite comfortably without them, with only his thoughts and books for company for many, many months.

Early on in the movie, his sister described him as having a strong moral code. I think this was shaped by the types of books he read. Perhaps the weight of his disappointment on discovering that others close to him either didn’t meet his expectations in this regard, or share the same values, was too much to bear. In that context I can understand the retreating, or as one character said - his running away. Maybe his adventure was intended to be a monastic or mystical experience. He did seem to have a spiritual side, some belief in “god”, however that was defined.

One of his postcards suggests that he knew and accepted that he may not survive this part of his adventure, but I don’t think he had a death wish. I don’t think he had a mental illness. I don’t think he is a hero, or someone to be emulated. (Apparently The Bus has become a place of pilgrimage of sorts. I find that macabre in the same way that I find visiting the graves of famous people like Jim Morrison a little odd. I just don’t get it.) I do think that his adventure didn’t turn out as he had hoped or expected, which makes it all the more tragic.

Of course this is all half-baked conjecture and speculation based on watching a 2 hour semi-factual retelling of his story, and some articles read on the web. That’s all it can be without the whole truth. No one will ever really know. Have you seen the film? What do you think?