Sunday, May 2, 2010

Into the Wild

Into the Wild is the story of Christopher McCandless who ran away from society, off into the Alaskan wilderness where he survived for about four months before starving to death.

It's a good movie. It irritated Mark though, because in the end, the story is about a selfish and stupid kid who can't get over the fact that his parents weren't nice people. The kid perverts that into believing that being rational is wrong, that relationships and that all of society are sick and that happiness only comes from nature. He runs away from it all ill prepared to survive in the wilderness.

Don't confuse independence with luck and living off the kindness of strangers. There is a reason we have society and it's not because it's easy to live in the bush.

I was willing to view the movie more charitably until I read more about McCandless. He really was stupid, selfish and lived off the kindness of strangers and not rebelling against society and trying to make his world a better place. The movie glosses over that to present a story about a man who died living his life without compromise.

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