Into the Wild

I knew I was lucky when I roughly had 20 hours worth of flight journey staring at me and there were about 15 movies to choose from to while away the time. Best part is I hadn’t watched most of those movies, thanks to my work schedule in the recent weeks. Of course, when you get down to it, you really only have a handful of movies to actually choose from – if you keep aside teen movies, immature comedies and other retarded stuff.

I read the plotline for most of the movies, and chose three: 1) Michael Clayton, 2) Into the Wild and 3) Bourne Ultimatum. Boy, didn’t I have a great time! I had watched Bourne once and knew it was great stuff. As for Clayton, the only thing I knew was that it was nominated for Oscars and there was George Clooney (which was reason enough). I had zilch idea about “Into the wild”, but I knew I had made a great selection just minutes into the movie. Talk about adventure and off-beat movies!

Where do I start? Well, the movie is a real-life story of a guy named Chris McCandless - a great student who feels claustrophobic amidst the chatters of capitalism and looks for ‘life’ amidst absolute wilderness. He chooses to live in the wilderness for some years essentially as a gypsy - as man would’ve lived some thousands of years ago, and he chooses Alaska as the place to live out. Remember, this movie is based on a real-life character. All our guy takes with him is his spirit, a book on ‘edible wild plants’, an essential belief on human spirit, some clothes, the love of absolute strangers, and loads of attitude. The rest of the movie is plain beauty as it just flows past you. If you are into adventure movies, you need to watch this.


Do not expect the movie to make you happy. It’s deep, real, adventurous, disturbing, and very touching. Not for the rookies.

I just checked the IMDB listing looking for an image, and there you have it: “Into the wild” is ranked 135 all time. Didn’t I expect it?

The author of the novel is Jon Krakauer, the same guy who wrote the book on the Everest disaster - “Into thin air”, which was so touching and daring. May be I should just try out all his books!