It seemed odd to me that Chis’s backpack wasn’t recovered – but it actually was. I read on Ron Lamothe’s site (producer of Call of the Wild) that indeed his backpack contained a wallet with several pieces of ID and $300, which was not found until very recently. This really changes a few things about the story in my opinion.

I have also read that Chis actually died after eating moldy seeds – it was the mold that was fatal. In my opinion, and according to Ron Lamothe’s research, he simply died of starvation.

The fact that he didn’t search for another river crossing seems to imply a bit of a death wish.

And my final observation is a real mystery to me. He posed in a final photograph, with a note reading that he had a good life and God bless all – but if he knew he was dying why on earth didn’t he write a note to his sister and parents. A very bitter young man.

In short, as many Alaskans have said, he got what he deserved. As did Treadwell.

Doma: You were not paying attention if you did not see the film as an endorsement. A) the film was made about him, not a real worthwhile man like Dick Proenneke. b) the film fetishizes McCandless in images like many a supermodel in a swimsuit shoot. c) the narration of the sister make it seem like McCandless was a wise beyond his years genius, rather than a self-absorbed narcissist, which is what his actions delineate. d) the ending makes it clear that McCandless had an almost superhuman connection to nature that the rest of us don’t. It was plain silly. Perhaps you simply do not have the ability to tell when you are being snookered, but manifestly you were.

Tim: ‘I don’t know how truthful the movie is to the actual human being it was about, but given that, why is the character an idiot? Because he was trying to find something essential that was missing from his life? Something he had been unable to find any of the other places he had been looking? This was a desperate character. Perhaps that is what either the movie failed to show or you failed to pick up on.’

He was an idiot because he went out unprepared and died of his own stupidity. As I said, all he had to do was follow the river downstream to cross or encounter other people. If you go into a lions cage carrying some raw steaks, do not you share some blame if a lion attacks you? He was desperate? Perhaps. But, if so, so what? That would make him young man # 32, 567, 887 to have felt such in the year he died. We still never get to see anything of the character beyond trite homilies and hagiographic imagery. Yawn.

Tim: I reviewed a movie about a character- who was an idiot. There is a difference between a film and a human being, When you understand that, you will have reached puberty.

Well, this is no documentary, but the movie purported to be about someone who was a human being. I don’t know how truthful the movie is to the actual human being it was about, but given that, why is the character an idiot? Because he was trying to find something essential that was missing from his life? Something he had been unable to find any of the other places he had been looking? This was a desperate character. Perhaps that is what either the movie failed to show or you failed to pick up on. I don’t know that the movie showed the true desperation this person must have felt to go on a journey like this completely alone. But, and I think you missed this, ion the end he did actually find what he was looking for (the character anyway, not sure about the real Chris), but only in dying.

Not sure what you mean about the puberty bit.

What you saw in the movie is not what I saw in the movie. I saw no endorsememt WHASOEVER.

In much the same way, Madame Bovary is not a recommnedation for the emptty lives of the bourgeoisie, it is, rather, condemnation with a touch of pity. While on the suject, it makes the reader confront the bits of the bourgois in one’s own life,

A lot of what one sees in a movie depends on what the viewer, or reviewer, brings to the viewing experinece. It is abvious we brought different frames of reference and had different experiences.

I’m delighted with the food-for-thought the movie provided for me.
I leave you with your own perceptions and what they bring, or not bring, to your experience.

Sympathy and empathy? It is empathy that keeps me from entirely accepting your view of McCandless as a spoiled fool and little more. As I recall from my own experiences, being young involves being foolish and making mistakes. If we survive them it’s one of the ways we learn. Some mistakes have greater consequences than others. Perhaps if he had survived his, he might have emerged with a lesson in humility.

About Timothy Treadwell: Perhaps he was metally ill. Either that or he brought foolishness to a new level. It’s especially unsettling, especially tragic, especially senseless, that he involved another person, one who trusted him, in a fate that would have made a certain sense had he met it alone. Sorry, I know this isn’t about Treadwell, but the name came up…

Anyway, I appreciated reading your review of the movie, and even though I took a certain amount of issue with it, I enjoyed your perceptions and writing. Certainly no one can accuse you of being ambiguous about your pov! I will likely steer clear of the movie at least in part because of your review, but also because I don’t see that any useful new information would come from seeing it.

Right.
And so, we are invited to think about what it was that led him to turn to a fairy tale, Next, we are invited to think about what fairy tales we, ourselves, embrace. And so on.

***Except the film does not offer such an invitation- it wholly embraces the folly of the character and reveres him as a more than mortal amongst mortals. I compared it with that bad Che Guevara film for a reason.

It’s a mistake, IMO, to confuse the main character with a hero figure. If you put aside the hero/anti-hero labels, much can be learned about both the frailty and strength of the human spirit.

***This is true, but it is THE FILM that mistakes McCandless as a hero, not the reviewer.

Sean Penn, on Charlie Rose, expressed a clear understanding of this, BTW. It seems to me, this crtitque is of something the movie is not, namely, an edorsement of the character and what he did.’

***Penn can say whatever BS he wants, the film says differently, as I show in some of the scenes described. Artists often say their work is about something, when the work lacks such qualities. This is why critics exist. And the film is an endorsement, in its obsession with the lead, its rapturous photography of him, its simpleminded explanations of his behavior, reinforced by narrations, etc. The film is a 100% hagiography of the character. Any flaws you have with that ideal are the film’s, not the review’s.

I agree with what you’re saying. You should read the book if you get a chance. It is a very good book–well written.

Mr. Mod: Film blew- like or dislike are irrelavent. Note, I mentioned Dick P. in the review. There was a man worth emulating- not an ass like McCandless or the even more delusional Timothy Treadwell of Grizzly Man.

J Spencer: I do empathize w McCandless, which is why I was able to so easily define him,. What you are describing is sympathy. They are different things. Look up their definitions. No, I don’t sympathize one iota with the stupid. But empathy, yes.

As for the book, I wrote: ‘The book the film is based upon was a good read.’

It’s amazing when people comment, and then manifest that they just skimmed a review.

Mr. Mod: ‘You think this will inspire young people to go out on a tear and accidentally kill themselves?’

No, but will fools worship this kid, like they do other fools who off themselves early? Yes, look at James Dean, Tupac Shakur, etc.

Doma: I reviewed a film that fetishized an individual. I did not psychoanalyze a person. Learn to distinguish the difference. I also detailed numerous directorial and narrative flaws.

Perhaps reading a review is required before commenting on it, even if this goes against blog tradition?

Right.
And so, we are invited to think about what it was that led him to turn to a fairy tale, Next, we are invited to think about what fairy tales we, ourselves, embrace. And so on.

It’s a mistake, IMO, to confuse the main character with a hero figure. If you put aside the hero/anti-hero labels, much can be learned about both the frailty and strength of the human spirit.

Sean Penn, on Charlie Rose, expressed a clear understanding of this, BTW. It seems to me, this crtitque is of something the movie is not, namely, an edorsement of the character and what he did.

I haven’t read the book. Even assuming the worst, that the author did see his character as a hero, though, that still leaves us with the choice of either putting him out of mind as unworthy of consideration, or thinking about what can be learned from his foibles. Just one possiblity would be to think how we all embrace ideas and ideals with such devotion that we become blinded to all else. Don Quijote, you know, lives in all of us.

Here’s what the Wikipedia page states:

“many Alaskans react with rage to his stupidity. You’d have to be a complete idiot, they say, to die of starvation in summer 20 miles off the Park’s Highway.”

And the film fails to mention this important detail.

Every individual is complex, often containing tendencies at war with one another. To referee those tendencies well, one muct first know what they are, to recognize that they are there, in us.

To learn anything at all, it’s necessary to understand how the hero and anti-hero versions of ourselves are interlaced. To reject either is to subscribe to a fairy tale version of life. That is more dangerous that exposing young minds to challenging ideas Jessica Schneider.

This story illuminates several aspects of the human soul. And that’s a good thing.

I saw the movie before I knew Sean Penn directed it. Perhaps that’s why I wasn’t so critical about the direction. I’m not a fan of his at all, so generally avoid his work. I’m glad I didn’t in this case.

“Life is as real, both for the good and ill, in a New York City deli, a doctor’s waiting room, or in a tenement, as it is on the peak of Mount Everest, riding the tube of a forty foot wave in Hawaii, or trekking through the Amazon. McCandless never learned this”

I also think the whole idolization of McCandless is dangerous because it makes young people think they have to go off and live sensationalized lives for their lives to have any “meaning” or “depth” to them.

But as is, it is difficult to empathize with “the pain and suffering of another” when that pain and suffering is brought on by himself and he carelessly avoids all necessary precautions. That’s why Dick Proenneke is such a strong contrast. One can still have adventure and make smart choices.

Penn’s directing was also very distracting with all the writing on the screen, split screens, etc. He wanted us to know there was a serious DIRECTOR AT WORK.

For that reason, the film did not pull me in like the book did because I never once throughout the film forgot I was watching a film because, ‘oh look, more writing on the screen to remind me that I’m watching a film…’

I liked the movie and the book too. While I on the one hand admired Chris’s fervor in pursuing his individual ideas, I simultaneously marvel at his inability to address the difference between fiction and reality. In his writing he clearly idolized Jack London and Thoreau. Neither of these people really did what they said they did. Now, I love “Walden” as much as anybody could, but the fact of the matter is that the “experiment” wasn’t Thoreau’s solitary life for two years, it was an experiment that he conducted while still very much carrying on his life in Concord. That’s not to put down Thoreau, but to point out that it was misguided to try and emulate it.

I thought the movie did a good job of showing Chris’s vision of reality with what reality truly was. It didn’t glorify his actions, contrary to what I keep reading. If you watch the movie you see that. The narrative inside his head was that his parents were heartless people that drove him away. The hippie mom was the out-of-family parallel to the situation Chris said he was running from, and it was clear how much she hurt from her own son’s leaving. Was Chris’s mom the same or different (there are heartless people in the world by the way)? We find out when the movie goes over the mother having the same motherly motions that one would expect in this situation.

The same is true for what you consider to be the brow beating in the bar scene. Did you know what he was thinking when he was staring longingly into the bar window? At first you think he is looking at them resentfully, but his eyes are a little too full of want for that. He in fact begins to want those things, the “normal things” of life that he had been running away from. When he saw himself as clearly being able to be within that culture, simply by existing in the city for a few short hours, he ran away because his ideology didn’t allow him to accept those things. You couldn’t have gotten that sort of rush of mixed emotions in a more effective way.

I like the idea of rugged individualism, it’s the American way. But the way Chris did it was heartless, wrong and very short sighted. The reality is that nature and life aren’t flexing and kind. You have to be prepared for them. Almost everyone also have family and friends that do care about ones’ well being, and they shouldn’t be isolated in the way that he did his own family. A much better model for rugged individualism done right would be Richard Proenneke. They should have made a movie like this about him. The problem, from a movie making perspective, is that Proenneke didn’t do it for some over arching ideological reasons or some inner-built family resentment. He did it because he thought that Twin Lakes was beautiful and he liked his isolation. He lived in the Alaska wilderness successfully for 30 years, building his own cabin by hand with only hand powered tools, but went in fully prepared for the experience. Now that’s impressive!

There is nothing that suggests that McCandless’s fleeting arrested adolescence is tiny, in the scheme of the cosmos

Wow. You really missed the point of this movie. It is unfortunate that you so handily minimize the pain and suffering of another. It is obvious this kid was not happy, and something very important was missing from his life, which he was trying to find. But to you he is just “stupid” and “a delusional narcissist”. It is unfortunate he had to die to find what was missing, but you seem to be rather glad that this was the outcome.

I will do my best to avoid the hateful messages that you and others like you have to offer. Please look try to look at yourself more deeply in the mirror. What made you who you are today? You may even want to contrast it with the kid in the movie. What made him what he was?