Whims published... It's not an expert's opinion, It's not an online diary, It's not a web journal... It is just my whims published

Went to the DVD library, started glancing @ the new Eng releases neatly kept aligned in the shelf. I had no particular movie in mind. A movie called ‘Into the wild’ caught my eyes. The DVD cover contained the picture of a young guy sitting on the roof of a maxi cab, staring at the horizon with his baggage lying beside him and a clear sky in the background. Quite an interesting pic isn’t it? I told the boy in the DVD shop to get me that DVD to have a look @ the theme of the movie. Boy reached out to the shelf and handed over the DVD to me n said some thing funny. He said, “Sir, this movie is about life..”. It was queer to hear that from a lad like him, he must be some 11-12 years of age. I contained my laughter and smiled @ him. Reading the brief plot of the movie on the hind cover of the DVD, I was quite impressed about the plot of the movie. I dint bother to see the director’s name, lead actor seemed like a new guy. Many a times the movies which I have watched/bought by mere gut feelings have turned out to be gr8 movies. Pinning on the same gut feeling I borrowed that DVD.

Now lets talk about the movie. The movie is about a guy called Chris McCandless who is just out of his college. Tired of his parents’ troubled relationship and in an attempt of soul-searching he leaves his home, parents and a younger sister, donates his fairly huge amount of savings money to charity and heads towards west coast. When he wanders around the states of USA, he indulges in many professions, masquerades under a pseudo name called Alexander Supertrump, gets lost in the wilderness, canoes down Colarado River crossing the border of USA illegally! In course of his sojourn, he meets variety of people, some nice men who offer Chris a job, some wanderers like him, some gentle men who question his purpose of wandering, some naturists etc etc. As the last phase of his travel he heads towards a region of Alaska, where there is no trail of humans around. He finds an abandoned maxi cab and starts living in it.

The movie unfolds in its own pace, with no hurry of what so ever; after all, the protagonist has all the time in the world right..? The movie has two interlaced narrations by both Chris, the man himself and his sister Carine. Mostly narrated by the latter.

There are moments in the movie when Chris burns his currency, when he refuses to settle down with a wanderer couple, when he turns down the offer of a teenage girl to bed her, when he aimlessly stares at nothing, u might get frustrated and feel like shouting WTF this guy wants in life? But what I admire the most about the movie is this movie is like reading a fine book. I think that’s a great compliment on its own for the movie. Whether it’s the alphabets of Chris’s letters/diary which marquees along on the fore ground or the way Chris’s journey is divided into chapters like ‘Birth’, ‘Childhood’, ‘Adolescence’, ‘Manhood’ and the last chapter ‘Getting of Wisdom’. The camera captures the finest details of the nature, emotions of Chris n his parents, as would have penned down meticulously by a writer.

The movie is based on a novel by the same name by Jon Krakauer and directed by Sean Penn [yes ur rite, academy award winner for his role in Mystic River]. Actors have done a gr8 job, kudos to Emile Hirsch who plays the role of Chris in the movie.

One last thing about the movie is u may get disappointed if ur expecting the story to be some serious soul searching one would do fleeing away from home. I was stunned when I found ‘Into the wild’ is based on a true story! I would still reco u this movie, if you enjoy ‘reading a book’…