'Into the Wild' for wanderers of all ages

After the fires, Fallbrookians can escape for two short hours by seeing the movie “Into the Wild.”

This is the true story of Christopher McCandless (portrayed by Emile Hirsch), who, suffering from post-adolescent rebellion, donates his savings to Oxfam and refuses his parents’ offer to buy him a new car to take to Harvard. Instead, he “hoofs it” from the rapids of the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon to grizzly country in Alaska, renaming himself Alexander Supertramp and burning his Social Security card along the way.

At the start of the movie, Christopher joins his parents, Billie (Marcia Gay Harden) and Walt (William Hurt), for an upper crust brunch and, of course, is disgusted by their offer, saying, “I don’t want these things.” Walt retorts, “Everything has to be difficult with you!”

Walt and Billie both know their son’s struggle but are helpless to reverse his stubbornness to stay pure in his belief that “material things don’t mean anything.”

Cinematically, compare this to watching “Billy Jack” in 1971, wondering how gullible a person can be to think beauty and justice do not come at a price.

Sean Penn directs this movie intentionally making the audience crave to see more beauty in the wild by focusing on what Christopher actually has to do to survive, like cutting up a moose he has shot for food.

Calling himself an “aesthetic voyager,” Christopher clings to people and poems he regards as anti-materialistic, living for the moment and everything his parents are not.

Christopher is living out his dream fantasy life of living off the land but suffers some very real consequences which cannot be undone. For one, in Alaska he gets so thin that even the grizzlies won’t waste their time on him as a potential meal. Fantastically, he makes it down some Level 5 rapids on the Colorado but can’t get back across the swollen river to civilization and food in Alaska.

Audiences will enjoy the heck out of this movie because it makes one feel alive and part of the struggle which Christopher – as every man – goes through at that time in life when “all they know is they are innocent and would never hurt anybody.”

It’s difficult to imagine that the real Christopher McCandless knew his own fate. The movie implies that every man at 20 doesn’t really know this “monster of materialism” he will eventually become.

Christopher views his parents this way – as monsters who consume more and more yet cannot be satisfied. They can only show their love by offering the things they have worked so hard to acquire.

In my opinion, Penn could have focused more on the beautiful scenery and less on the moose being cut up. He artfully chooses the carnage to restate the parental concern of Jan (Catherine Keener) to Christopher with her concern, “Do your parents know where you are?”

On the other side, in Christopher’s defense, “Those who wander are not always lost.”