This is a very good movie. So much better than the knock off wannabe recently put out on Netflix called Penelope. Into The Wild just feels so much more raw and more emotionally accurate– probably because it’s based on a real person. I remember reading the in High school and rolling my eyes at Alex’s decisions to give away all his money and runaway, but now I really see the appeal. There is so much that is mundane, stressful and phony about modern life that becoming nomadic and experiencing nature is appealing. Our modern day equivalent to this is #vanlife.
The movie quoted heavily from “Call of the Wild” by Jack London, but the movie also had some solid quotes in it.
Some people feel they don’t deserve love, they walk away into empty spaces, trying to close the gaps in their past
This was spoken by Alex when he was consoling Bob about Jan’s distant emotional state while feeling down in the dumps– since Alex reminded her about her son. This describes a profound sense of unworthiness that causes people to self-isolate or sabotage relationships, attempting to heal past wounds alone. This is terribly hard to be on the receiving side of, yet it is what people commonly do, especially if they have depression. Rather than leaning on people they love for support, they self-isolate in the fear that receiving help would make them a burden towards others.
More core to the story, Alex had two main quotes as he discovered what brought joy in life.
Your wrong if you think that the joy in life comes principally from human relationships. God’s placed it all around us, it’s in everything and anything we can experience. People just need to change how they look at those things.
As he was nomadic, is was pretty clear from how the movie was shot that Chris met a lot of people and got great joy from them. When he was staying with the old man in the dessert he told him that effectively that happiness primarily comes from nature and everything that is around us. But, later when he is starving alone in the van in Alaska the last thing he writes down is that “happiness is only real when shared”. Both can’t simultaneously be true at the same time. Maybe Alex is suggesting that happiness alone is artificial, or it doesn’t run deep enough to keep you alive in the long run. The first quote is very Buddhism esk and grounded in the practice of mindfulness. But, even Buddhist will acknowledge that happiness isn’t isolated, everything is connected to everything else, and when practicing Buddhism, it’s important to have a community– Sangha.
Happiness is only real when shared