always be prepared!

i like my men lean... but emile, honey, you're a fucking cadaver. literally. seeing poor emaciated emile made me appreciate the [extra] meat i have on my bones.

i liked the message of the movie. sometimes you have to die to really live. depressing, i know, but really i felt like his whole journey, his whole life was leading up to his death. the movie kind of worked backwards for me. after graduation he seemed dead and lifeless, and little by little he became more alive and almost more naive with each new experience. thinking that he could really honestly live off the land with no formal training in survival techniques, seemed a little foolish to me. but that's what he had to go through in order to discover himself and be "born". i really got the feeling that "this life" was a test for him and that his death was more of a birth into another life. very buddhist and om but the whole dying scene really got to me and had that air of fulfillment and completion.

on the other hand however... i got the feeling that chris (emile) was looking to die all along. he was never really truly happy until his last breath. sure he cried when he found out he was dying but he never, throughout the whole film, had a look of contentment on his face like he did on his deathbed. another reason i feel he was a closet suicide waiting to happen was because he didn't even really try to help himself once he found out he ate the poisonous plant. camping trip or not, i would have booked the hell out of there for medical assistance. immediately. it didn't feel like he was giving up, though. it was like death was a goal he was working towards unconsciously. he knew he would never be happy in this life and saw death as a reward for putting up with life.

into the wild had a few slow parts for me. i found myself wondering what this or that part had to do with anything. while these points seemed... pointless... at the end i remembered that not everything in life has a point. since this was a life story (and not an episode of lost) it was acceptable that there were a few boring parts. everyone's life has boring parts. everyone's life has some unfinished bits.

it was a nice life story. inspiring even. but reminded me of my hatred of camping which resulted in a few points being docked off.

into the wild :: B