I watched 'Into the Wild' last night and enjoyed it very much. It was one of those films where you empathise with every character and genuinely feel happy when they succeed and upset when they meet with tragedy. The acting was superb and the flashback structure kept me engaged and interested in the character of Christopher throughout what is, in the end, a rather long film.
However, under the happy and photogenic exterior it dealt with some difficult questions about what it means to live as a human among the structures and expectations of modern society. 'Alexander Supertramp' starts off from a privileged position as the academically gifted son of rich business owners. A fervent non-conformist he quickly rejects this heritage in order to search for happiness and the freedom to express himself. This self sufficient, individualist philosophy is generally portrayed positively. You can't help but like the dishevelled yet still handsome 'Alexander' ( who looks vaguely Che Guevara-ish at some points in the movie) and the impact that his innocent friendliness has on the people he meets during his travels.
However beneath the surface the film accepts that there are ugly sides to this lifestyle choice. The most obvious is Christopher's rejection of his parents and the obvious pain that this causes them. He leaves university without telling them and actively takes steps to ensure they will not know where he is or be able to track him down. The film's portrayal of the violent and argumentative atmosphere he was raised in makes you feel some sympathy for his need to cut all ties but at the same time it seems a major over reaction. His parents were not perfect but they did provide him with an education and spontaneous acts of kindness and support. It wasn't their fault that his ascetic moral code meant he saw these gestures as criticisms and hypocrisy rather than generosity. This youthful rejection of the smugness of elders is a recurring theme in both American and European films and social history. Ever since the late 60's there has been a current of rebellion among younger generations against the prosperous baby boomer's born in the immediate post-war period (which has frequently developed into violent protest such as that of the 1968 uprisings or the 1970s terrorism in Germany or Italy). Christopher's parents seem to receive excessive punishment for what is generally understood to be a society-wide lack of intergenerational understanding and compromise.
Other negative aspects of 'Alexander's' position are shown in a more ambivalent manner. He has to sleep in rough conditions and get unskilled, casual jobs in burger bars and on shady Southern farms but he seems to enjoy this and sees it as necessary to fulfil his self-set goal of reaching Alaska and living in the wild. Times when he experiences failure are also painful to watch but are shown as necessary to the project of self development he has embarked on. He might feel bad about killing a moose and failing to dress the corpse before it rots but he realises that there can be no challenge without risk of frustration.
However, there is one negative aspect of Alexander's life that gains greater importance to him and to the viewer throughout the film as the character isolates himself further from human society. After spending some weeks in Alaska he writes down the phrase, 'Happiness only real when shared' between the lines of Tolstoy's 'Family Happiness and other short stories'. His personal goal of reaching Alaska has all along contained a contradiction between his contentment and his need to escape. During the flashbacks to his previous travels you have seen that he is a sociable individual and enjoys meeting sympathetic and interesting characters that he can relate to and build meaningful relationships with (in some cases seeming to identify surrogate parent figures). However, in Alaska he lives without company for an inconceivably long amount of time. This life in the wild has its times of happiness as he has achieved his goal of total escape. However, he gets more and more lonely and the viewer is eventually left to question whether his own goals were not in the end as incoherent as those offered to him by his elders, even before the risks of living alone are further illustrated by his tragic and unnecessary but not entirely unforeseen death.
Therefore the ultimate message of the film is largely left up to the watcher. Those who believe that it is better to live a few years of glorious happiness than a long but conventional life will be saddened by 'Alexander's' death but see it as a reasonable price for his happy 'Supertramp' years. Those who take a more typical utilitarian view of what happiness is might think that his early death is pointless and that he would have been better off living a less risky bohemian life (that could have retained much of the unconventional freedom and sociability he enjoyed) or even accepting the conventions of society in order to enjoy the safer satisfactions it could bring. A related question, the answer to which again depends largely on the fundamental principles of the viewer, is whether Christopher is selfish to pass up the chances and expectations of society in order to live his individualist life. He gives most of his savings to charity, an uncomplicated act of goodness. However, some might argue that in return for raising him and educating him society could be forgiven for having expecting him to use his obvious talents to help others, rather than in pursuit of his own ends to the exclusion of all else. These deeper questions turn what could have been a heart warming film with a bit of a depressive ending into a real brain teaser that challenges you to compare your life to that of the protagonist and consider whether your own lifestyle might benefit from making some 'wild' choices.
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