A Complete Explanation Of Everything

Into the Wild, Directed by Sean Penn (2007)

There will be a million and one posts devoted to this movie. They'll mention the excellent book by Jon Krakauer. An excellent book, that weaves the story of Christopher Johnson McCandless with the author's own experience and misadventure in climbing mountains. They might focus on the really tragic denouement of the story of the young scholar turned leather tramp, McCandless himself. The pain and suffering of his family.

More than a few will talk about the stunning naievete (some will term it, contempt) that the young man displayed versus the harsh wilderness, and his belief that with but a few meagre provisions he could make a life on the land.

But I bet only a very few, will quote this section of Henry David Thoreau's book, Walden Or Life in the Woods, which he had underlined.

“No man ever followed his genius till it misled him. Though the result were bodily weakness, yet perhaps no one can say that these consequences were to be regretted, for these were a life in conformity to higher principles. If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal, - that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality. Perhaps the fact most astounding and most real are somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of the morning or evening. It is a little stardust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.”

Go see it in the cinema while you can...