DVD Movie Review: Into the Wild - A Boy Escapes Secret Pain

“There is pleasure in the pathless woods;
There is rapture on the lonely shore;
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more.”

Above excerpt from poem by Lord Byron (1788–1824) is the beginning of the movie based on a true story, of a young top student and athlete Christopher McCandless from Emory University, who donated his savings (all $24,000) to charity and abandoned his car, walked by himself, alone, “Into the Wild”, into Alaska. He burned his social security card, all personal IDs, and family photos, leaving no clue for his well-off family to find him. A very sad journey of a young man at 24 to disconnect himself entirely from society from the moment he burnt the remaining cash in his wallet, a “new birth”, in his words… The perceived hypocrisy in his parents’ and family relationships that he hates most has buried, in a little boy’s heart, a secret bomb of pain, not unlocked in time. He did not make one phone call even to his younger sister, nor did love from acquaintances on the road stop him from a journey obviously leading an innocent to apparent danger. Does the young man “love not man the less, but Nature more”?

Released by Paramount Vantage. Running time: 140 minutes. Starring Emile Hirsch, Marcia Gay Harden, and William Hurt. (screenshots) -