whether it’s been filled with highs or lows or a mixture of the two, i am so proud of you for making it through.
take a moment to reflect on how far you have come, and all that you have accomplished. the most important achievement you made was simply making it this far despite everything life throws at us.
may 2019 be kinder and brighter and filled with happy memories and love in every aspect of life.
take each day at a time and i promise we’ll make it through the new year.
I’ve heard a lot of people talk about how uplifting and inspiring this Sean Penn film is. But a week ago, I pulled up the movie with the plan of settling in for the night, but I became rather deeply unsettled. It’s not inspiring, or uplifting. I ended the movie feeling as cold and lonely as its protagonist. It’s not something to feel happy about. It’s a senseless tragedy.
It’s a gorgeous masterpiece of cinematography and soundtrack collaborating to tell a story, I’ll give it that. Emile Hirsch’s performance was nothing short of thoughtful, involved, and riveting, and Hal Holbrook’s role sent me into tears. (I can also say with certainty that Kristen Stewart put on a sympathetic performance with emotion. Just sayin’)
The story is that of young, idealistic college graduate Christopher McCandless, an extremely intelligent, albeit shortsighted man with convoluted yet uncompromising morals. After graduating from Emory College, the story goes, he dumps his savings into charity, cuts up his credit cards, burns his social security, and drives out of Atlanta without telling anyone. He hitchhikes and works around the country, saving money so that he can spend a few months in the Alaskan bush as some sort of spiritual adventure. His last correspondence with anyone is in late April. With minimal supplies and no compass, he walks into the wild, firm in his belief that this is the only way he can destroy what he considers a false, materialistic being inside him. His decaying body is found by moose hunters in early September, some two and a half weeks after he’d passed from starvation (whether or not poisoning was an important factor is still subject to debate).
Some people see this as the story of an steadfast idealist with a love of nature- free from the concrete cages of society and the restraints of conventional morality. To them, his story his an inspiration, his path something to be followed, although with more foresight, preparation, and knowledge. Other see him as an arrogant sociopath who did, admittedly, put his money where his mouth is, but severely underestimated, disrespected, and under-researched his dangerous surroundings, and as a pseudo-religious figure to outdoorsmen that has led to the death of several hikers who attempted to reach the bus in which he died.
“Chris McCandless was deeply kind and supremely selfish; tremendously brave and jaw-droppingly foolish; impressively competent and staggeringly inept; that is to say, he was hewn from the same crooked timber as the rest of us.“
My opinion is, does he have to be one or the other? One person posited that he was a deeply complicated person, just as the rest of us - in his words, “hewn from the same crooked timber.” His story is a cautionary tale and a terrifying tragedy, a sad and reckless loss of life and innocent idealism - not an opportunity to tear up a young man fleeing a broken home and trying to make sense of the cruelty around him, while finding kindness everywhere he goes. He was a self centered, reckless and disturbed man, as well as deeply kind, brave, and resolute one. It isn’t not something to be idolized, rather something to ponder. I often wonder who Chris McCandless would be if he had the good sense not to go into the wild. He may have renounced or tamed his extreme interpretation of a wandering lifestyle. He may still have kept wandering. He may have told his story, or he may have kept its golden revelations to himself - that happiness is only real, tangible, and meaningful when you get to experience it with the people you love, and in his terse, fearful, and sad writing- “HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED.”
The people who try tirelessly to make sense of his actions and life and figure out the unclear circumstances of his death are often the people who see their own faces in his- souls that don’t know if they want to be tethered to one place, people who want to go back to a simpler, more raw and true reality that may have never existed. They’re often feeling as lost as McCandless did, and often are idolizing the sad, near suicidal course of his actions. Those who denigrate his ideals and draw and quarter his story are those jealous of his courage and baffled as to why he’d flee his family and all of the comforts of his life.
I feel that this movie is less of a statement on the materialistic society we reside in, and more of a question as to how we want to live, and how we want to look upon the men, women, and others who dare to challenge the way we view our world.
