Originally published at my real blog. Please leave any comments there.

Thoughts on “Into the Wild.” My comments will probably contain spoilers, so don’t read before seeing the movie.

The premise of this movie hits me right at an intersection of my personality. I have, up until only lately, considered myself to be someone who finds her happiness in places other than material wealth. Who finds it in nature, spirituality, and adventure. That was back when those things were all I had. Now that I’ve achieved a level of financial comfort, I find myself liking it. And wanting more of it. Sometimes I wonder if my former myself would be disappointed in me. I still find myself inexplicably drawn to people who “throw it all away.” I still think of them as heroes, as people who’ve figured out what it’s all about. I feel hypocritical in my admiration for it because I wouldn’t ever do it myself.

And you think you have to want more than you need
Until you have it all, you won’t be free…

These were the emotions I expected to feel when I was watching this movie. I expected to be mourning a fallen messiah who was brought down by something so stupid as a plant…

I did mourn that part. But before it, I mourned many other things. I realized this movie isn’t about a guy who made the right choices, the choices the rest of us aren’t brave enough to make. It’s about a guy who made the wrong choices, out of, well, cowardice. He ran away from his problems and left a trail of broken hearts in his wake. And in the end, he regretted it. The scene where he writes “happiness is only real if shared” between the lines of text in Walden… that’s the part where I most wanted to cry. He realized it only after it was too late. He was too weak to return and set things right.

Meanwhile he left his parents, who yes had made terrible mistakes, but were being judged way too harshly by their son’s total disappearance without a word in a state of suspended animation. The scenes of their agonized faces wrenched my heart. The sense of rejection he dealt to his sister was even worse since she’d done nothing to deserve it at all. Not to mention the teenage girl he allowed to fall in love with him. (Her pain I related to the most). And the old lonely man who he gave a taste of friendship only to pull it away…

I think I need to find a bigger place
Cause when you have more than you think, you need more space…

You can see him as a wandering savior blessing people, then moving on. But I don’t get the impression he did that with anyone but the hippie couple. They had each other so it was ok. I saw it more as a story of him abandoning people.

For what? What did he prove? He proved that society can have a corrupting influence, and that we don’t need society to survive. But he sure didn’t prove that we don’t need it to thrive. We are social animals. We can be happy out in the woods, for sure. But I don’t think we can truly be happy alone.

Quotes from the movie soundtrack song “Society” sung by Eddie Vedder.