INTO THE WILD - THE WORLD IS JUST AWESOME

There is a commercial campaign doing rounds on discovery channel. It says the "The World is Just Awesome". One of the commercials features Bear Grylls(Man Vs Wild) hanging on to a helicopter, about to jump into the space and sea. The height is giddy and the sea is completely blue below. This image comes back to me. When I ride on my bike without my helmet on, when I run on to the top of a nearby hill. The moment of this image has freedom and man can actually count the forces acting on him. Or can he?

Into the Wild is a movie which has been on my "To Watch" list for quite a while. It promised something you yearn for. To minimize the number of forces acting on you, to break free, to move away. Finally I got hold of it. The two hours and twenty eight minutes(end titles included) were liberation. Liberation as an experience. Experience just enhanced by some beautiful compositions by Eddie Vedder(Pearl Jam).

We all want to escape. A notion in our subconscious, of a place where you would be free. If you feel you don’t, Please consider this a peculiarity only to me. But when I think about such a place, I think of a free fall and I think of the sea. When I think about both of them, I see an endlessness about them. Places in your short sighted, momentary reactions you consider as endless. It is this endlessness about them that fascinates me.

Christopher McCandless(Emile Hurst in the movie) was a person who went out in pursuit of this endlessness. He assumed a name Alexander Supertramp and took a dip into the wilderness. In his short life, he conceptualized this idea of freedom and went on to pursue it. The pursuit was not to reach anywhere but to move away from things. The Move Away was rather a Moving On, if you see it in that perspective. Into the Wild is the story of that Moving On. It is a story where Christopher McCandless believes that the society which follows a particular pattern needs to be given a break, reasons need to be abandoned and Wilderness needs to be given a chance. This is exemplified in a scene when he burns the dollar bills he has at his disposal. That moment gave me some sadistic pleasure. After that, everything was just devoid of contempt .

Now in the truest sense of word, society exists in your mind. Its rules or the patterns you call them, all are thought about and perceived by you. You make peace with the picture created by that interpretation or question it. And when you give it a break, it actually comes back to you. Moments of peaceful solitude can actually replay the patterns to you. You can actually be more bothered about them. This belief of mine is reemphasized in a particularly brilliant scene in the movie, when Chris while trying to cook a hunted moose, replays what he experienced at his home, due to his parents who had a troubled relationship and who kept going to keep up a social image, they wanted to portray.

But that is not all what getting Into The Wild is all about. It is about experiencing, rather introducing entropy to your life. Entropy which only nature can introduce. It is about being Wild in the Wild. One such brilliant scene in the movie is where Chris goes Kayaking on a particularly violent river. He fights the waves and goes on. At the end of that adventure, he says "If everything in this world is rode by reason, the possibility of life is Destroyed". That line stays with you.

And, there is fear. Once, Me and my friends went for a trip to goa. On a typically violent beach, we decided to try some jet skiing. It was a high tide day and the sea looked fearsome. We went ahead with our pursuit though. When we were somewhere in the middle of the scheduled distance, the Jet Ski turned. Me and my friend, feel into the sea in that moment of shock. Though I claim to enjoy the sea, the point where you can no more stand induces a fear in me. When we fell into the sea, my first instinct was to try to stand, to find that quiet assurance of gravity. I could not find the ground. Though I managed to get back to write this, that particular moment brings back that fear to me. The fear is your connect to the world you leave behind. Attachments that you claim to wish to renounce and still cant live without in the core of your heart. That is the fear which Chris McCandless felt three times in the movie.

You would call it a coming of age story. But it would be a story which has a possibility of making you as viewer, come of age. There are moments of exhilaration. There are moments of sanctity which only a virgin island far away from civilization can offer you. The movie is your weekend trip. And it goes back to the basics. It then starts rebuilding. Chris in the movie moves in and out of civilization. He works in a corn farm as a daily wage labour. He learns the skills and likes doing them. He intends to go to Alaska one day.

In his life in Alaska, he writes his experiences in a diary. One entry is made as GET ORGANIZED. Now, this is where I emphasize on growth. Now, this growth may be termed as a contradiction with respect to the whole movie, because the whole intent was to move away from society, people and attractions. I choose to collectively call them as ORGANIZATION. But there is a difference. The ORGANIZATION in the latter case is the discovery of it, due to realization. In the former, it is just a knowledge just handed over with an assurance that things would be safe if you are organized.

I watch Bear Grylls on Discovery and I fantasize. He claims of loving nature. But the love, maybe is derived from the endurance that is tested. The basics of human survival that come into play without the corruption of a so called higher code. He eats snakes, insects. I exclaim in disgust. But, then that is the art of survival. The basic instinct of a man at its complete honesty.

I am filled today. With the images from the movie and the feeling those images evoke. These are the most virgin feelings. Maybe these were the feelings man was given to before the first book on life was written, before the first religion was introduced, before the first judgment was passed. Images which reiterate that "The World Is Just Awesome".And this movie brings back to me the first line of that beautiful Bob Dylan song:
"How many roads must a man walk down, before you call him a man?"

"The Answer, My friend, is Blowin in the Wind; The answer is blowin in the wind"

The Last Image of Christopher McCandless in Wilderness

Rest in Peace, Chris McCandless, because peace is what you attained on earth.