Into the Wild

MOOSE HUNTING DEPARTMENT

One of my peasants saw Into the Wild the other day and reported thus:

Finally! A movie that deals with real themes and people and shows us places that really exist that we have never seen before. A movie not about James Bond with amnesia. A movie not about cops fed up with the justice system and going on killing sprees. A movie not designed to sell toys, Happy meals, and other consumer crap.

Into the Wild is about as far as you can get from a Hollywood movie while still being anchored in production value, the English language, and comprehensible storytelling technique. It reminded me a lot of 70s road movies like Easy Rider and Two Lane Blacktop -- movies allowed to meander, explore, and contemplate nothing less than existence itself.

Unfortunately, I don't think many people are buying tickets to see the dang thing. That's too bad, because this is a beautiful movie to immerse oneself in, with spectacular location photography in wild and unusual locations, not to mention seldom seen ones like L.A.'s skid row.

Go to a theater to see skid row? Yeah, I know, kind of a strange notion. But I'm tired of seeing Santa Monica Pier in every other movie made. Fuck the Westside. Fuck New York. Show us Vince Vaughn on a combine and Catherine Keener in a Winnebago.

Despite not being good box office, my prediction is that quite a few people will still end up seeing this movie, since it's going to get a ton of Oscar nominations. If it doesn't, then Pluto is going to crash into the earth tomorrow. Ironically, when people see this movie it will be from the comfort of their living rooms, the very thing Wild's anti-hero Christopher McCandless leaves behind in his search for truth, beauty, and a quiet place to read. What irony, in fact, that McCandless' story of existential escapism and anti-consumerism was made into a movie.

Good source material helps, and John Krakaeur's original book is truly an original, giving the McCandless story an historical context. His description of 9th Century Christian monks that got fed up with Iceland for becoming too crowded and therefore rowing off to Greenland is priceless.