Review Thursday: Into the Wild, book and film

You're either the type of person who comes alive in the presence of others, or else you need to get away from people in order really feel yourself. I mention this because I think your identification with one role or the other will probably determine much of they way you feel about Into the Wild, either the Jon Krakauer book or the Sean Penn film.

Watching the DVD the other day reminded me how engrossing I found this story when I first read the book. The hero of the nonfiction story, Christopher McCandless, aka Alexander Supertramp, really calls into question the prevailing attitude that solitude inevitably means loneliness. Conjuring an archetype honed by everyone from Henry David Thoreau to cranky naturalist and Desert Solitaire author Edward Abbey, the Krakauer book grapples deeply with a forbidding yet fascinating topic: being alone.

What would it feel like to just check out of society? Burn all your money? Spend day upon day by yourself, out in the wild? I don’t know many people who could embrace such deep solitude, so, by virtue of that accomplishment alone, I’m fascinated by McCandless.

At the same time, I know that the book and movie are both guilty of romanticizing this character. They want him to be one-of-a-kind, when certainly there are things about McCandless that are of a kind: there’s something about the guy that suggests the sort of self-righteous, fanatical hippie that probably everyone knew in college (exhibit A: when he gives himself the dopey moniker Alexander Supertramp). The hubris of a young twentysomething man--also, of a kind. The Penn film, particularly, lets McCandless of the hook for not having developed the skills to survive in the Alaskan wilderness.

Still, I was surprised how much the film was able to evoke fundamentally internal states. In both the book and the film, there is something really haunting about McCandless’s demise, when it’s certain that McCandless wasn’t feeling the life-affirming joy of self-reliance, but instead desolation…and loneliness.

How easy it is to slip between solitude and loneliness is certainly a worthy subject, and one that the book is able to cover much better than the film. But both portray a fascinating story that I think is worthy of consideration.