FilmNBookReview: Into the Wild

Into the Wild is initially a book by Jon Krakauer, an American journalist, after he has covered a sad story of a young man going out in the wild alone. By the cover, you can not only tell the man's gonna die, but also that he's already dead by the time you are reading that cover. My boyfriend had the book handed to him by his aunt whose totally in love with it. He tried to read it, but stopped twenty pages later. He handed it to me. I stopped fifty pages later, but I tried again a few weeks after to come down on page 149. I was discouraged by the tone of the book: this is a glaucous report about an original solitary hobo-by-choice dead guy driven by Leo Tolstoy's writings. What made me grudged on it was that it seems to be that marvelous personality that led him to his death: And I cannot support it. All the time you read the book, nothing is kept from you except HOW he died. But it did not interested me to know "how" he "did" it...

Until one of my great friend told me that she knows a film I absolutely have to see 'cause I will certainly "LUV" it. "Which one?" I asked her. "Into the Wild!" she said "This is the story of a young guy leaving his family and friends to go hitchhiking around America and he ends up in Alaska..." I stopped her: "I read the book. That was boring me to death." "Impossible!" she replied.

So, I watched it (I did not really have the choice: she comes by my apartment with the movie she has rented just for me). It was really good. It was uncommon. Special. Splendid. Lovely.

And, now that I've talked about it with my bf's aunt, I can tell you the book is good too. I haven't finished it yet, but I will. You only have to read it on another mood that I was: It matters a lot HOW he died. This guy had friends and a family that loved him. Even when he was hitchhiking, he encountered many people that became parts of his life and were devastated by the news of his death.

This story is stunning by the idealistic way of seeing life Chris McCandless had, by the fact it's a real story, by the love its shared... to be in life, to live, to share our experiences with others. It gives you the will to go outside and fully enjoy life: because the next moment can be the last.

"So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future." Written down by McCandless in a letter to Ron.

"Everett was strange," Sleight concedes. "Kind of different. But him and McCandless, at least they tried to follow their dream. That's what was great about them. They tried. Not many do."

You absolutely have to read or watch it if...

• you have more a conservative way of seeing life;
• you have more a idealistic way of seeing life;
• you love "true stories";
• you want to see/read something American, but not the popular kind of stuff.