Into the Wild is widely considered to be a classic in terms of outdoor-related movies. It’s widely considered one of the best movies of the 2000s in general. I certainly agree. The 2007 Sean Penn-directed release appeared to grippingly capture the sadly short saga of Chris McCandless, a self-turned vagrant who roamed North America in the early 90s until finally passing away in the wilds of Alaska. It is based on the 1995 book of the same title by Jon Krakauer. It too is considered a classic of its genre, even more so than the movie in fact.
I had watched Into The Wild several times since it was released and before I decided to pick up the book. As I mentioned before, I think the movie is good. I love it, to be honest. Between the powerful score, done by Eddie Vedder, the great performances by all actors involved, and the fascinating and tragic subject matter, this movie caters to my interests in a number of different ways. The jumbled-up, back-and-forth pacing of this movie put me on the edge of my seat, wondering what the fate of this young man would be by the end, even though I full-well knew what eventually happened to McCandless at the end of his life. That is called great directing, and I think we ultimately have to congratulate Sean Penn for his theatrical interpretation of this story. It got a much wider audience (like me) interested in the life of Chris McCandless and what we can learn from him.
I think many of us can see a little bit of Chris McCandless in ourselves, particularly those that have “the travel bug” like I do. As a somewhat young man myself (only a few years older than Chris was at the time of his death), I can only admire his zeal for genuinely experiencing the world. Yes, the criticism that he was a little reckless holds validity (albeit less validity after finishing the book), but you simply cannot experience the life that he did without taking risks. He seemed wise beyond his years and could allegedly connect with people of all ages whom he met. I think that likewise, his story can connect with people of all ages too. It did not hurt that he lived in a time when smartphones didn’t exist, and he could embark on his adventure with little to no distraction from the internet and most of the outside world. He was forced to use his wit and actually interact with other humans in order to find his way. As someone with a self-admitted addiction/over-reliance on my phone, I continue to be jealous. As cliche as it sounds, I sometimes wish I was born in another time, a time when someone like Chris McCandless did not know what it means, and neither needed, to seek constant validation on social media.
I’m not sure why it took so long for me to eventually just buy the book and read it. Perhaps the constant praise for it made the book seem a little intimidating. I think I have a slight fear of eventually having to finish the book I am currently in love with, and I had a hunch that I was going to completely absorb this story in a very short time. How could this tale that I’ve only known from a two-hour-long movie be made into a full-on book? Didn’t it start out as a simple magazine article? Anyway, earlier this year I finally dove into it. I mostly wanted to see what was made up for the movie and what was factual. There could be no way every character and every wild thing actually existed. Surprisingly, I was proven mostly wrong on that.
Not only was the movie evidently very faithful to the book, but there were also a number of things in the true-life story that I did not expect to be real. For example, I remember talking to someone who said that the character of Ron Franz, an old man who lost his family in a tragic accident while serving overseas and had a penchant for helping hitchhikers, was completely made up by Sean Pean to be used as a sort of father figure character to Chris. In fact, Ron Franz was completely real and participated in a large swathe of the book. Franz’s story, which was cut short in the movie, was actually a lot more tragic yet also uplifting in reality. What’s missing from the was him randomly finding out about Chris’s death and then attempting suicide from grief. Chris had actually promised to come back and see him, and maybe even become Franz’s legal heir. Another important detail that was left out of the movie was that Franz really did take the advice from Chris that he should see more of the world. He ended up selling his house, buying a van, and living on the road for many years after. Just one of many people who were genuinely touched by Chris McCandless for the better.
I’m not blaming the movie for leaving out details like this, however. It is important to know how pacing and editing differ between a book and a movie. We must remember that movies can only really keep our attention for like three hours maximum, whereas most readers would gladly spend twenty-plus hours with a book. To the movie’s credit, the back-and-forth time jumps closely resemble the pacing of the book, which also jumps back and forth between time periods in Chris’s life, primarily between his time in Alaska, his life on the road, and his prior home life with his family.
Another problem with the movie format is how some of the more personal details are told. The movie definitely does not portray Chris as incompetent, however, the movie doesn’t quite do a good job of dispelling the slightly false notion that Chris was just an arrogant kid with a death wish. While it is speculated that Chris might’ve been suicidal to a degree, the book shines a bit better light on Chris’s survival skills and state of mind. Chris was not as dumb or arrogant as many people believe he was. Without getting into too much detail and completely spoiling the story, there is a lot of evidence that Chris took the time to study up on some of the obstacles that lay ahead on his trip to the Alaskan bush. There is also evidence that Chris was able to use a lot of these advanced skills and expertly apply them in the field. I mean, the guy who was raised in the relatively cushy and temperate state of Virginia, lived almost a whole year (much of it under snow and ice) in an abandoned bus in the middle of Alaska. He was no slouch. The manner in which Chris died is also not fully agreed upon, whereas for simplicities sake in the movie, he definitively dies of poisoning from eating wild potato root seeds. The possibility of Chris dying from this cause is highly debated in the book, with Jon Krakauer basically becoming an amateur bio-chemist in order to prove/disprove this claim. Chris’s body was so whithered and decomposed by the time he was found that it will be impossible to fully know what exactly happened to him.
If you have read the book but not watched the movie, perhaps the movie can provide an emotional and mostly accurate retelling of a story you already admire. Sometimes physically hearing and seeing a story play out on the screen can make it more relatable, or at the very least, give it great entertainment value, which in this case it does.
If any of the points in this blog sound interesting to you and you have not yet read the book, it behooves you to do so. Perhaps it’s not as immediately entertaining as the movie, but to readers and non-readers alike, it illuminates many important details and lessons of the Chris McCandless story that should be more widely known. It cuts through many of the misconceptions and fleshes out many of the things you may already know about the young man and his journey to find himself in the wild.
