DVD review: Into the Wild

December 17, 7:35 AMMinneapolis Outdoor Recreation ExaminerMarie Malinowski

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Chris McCandless living the dream 

It’s hard to be an Outdoor Recreation Examiner when you’re stuck inside, feeling like the communal butt towel in a Turkish bathhouse. I don’t blame this on Costa Rica, but, rather, the recirculated air on the airplanes. The upside to being sick is that I got to stay home from work and watch “Into the Wild”, arguably the best movie for any lover of the outdoors.

The story, a true one, centers on Chris McCandless. After graduating from Emory University, he gave the remains of his savings account, $24,000, to charity. He cut up his driver's license, identification cards, and burned his social security card and headed west in his Datsun B-210. He reinvented himself as Alexander Supertramp, philosophical drifter, lover of all things simple. When the Datsun drowned tragically in a flash flood, he hoofed his way about the western U.S., eating a lot of rice and sleeping in ditches and dumpsters.

At one time or another, we've all had the urge to leave our lives behind and start a new journey. When I finished my undergraduate, I wanted to drive all the way to the southern-most tip of Patagonia, savor unfiltered experiences and allow circumstances, and not conformity, to shape my life. As Krakauer said in the book, “There is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon.”

It never happened. I had student loans that needed regular payments, credit card balances that were dangerously close to the limits, and a car that would have never made it as far as Lake Havasu City. Fundamental reasoning also materialized. It would have been a headache for my parents to fly down to Argentina, identify my body, and have it shipped back to the States.

Though Chris McCandless had a desire for adventure, he also had some serious, and deeply rooted, issues with his parents. Between you and me, I think he was a few ounces short of a nickel bag. Not once during his transient trek did he ever call his mom to tell her he was alive.

That's where I cease to be sympathetic to him. Many people didn’t live the TV Land life with Ward and June Cleaver. But to just disappear and leave everyone wondering and worrying? That’s just plain cruel. Years ago I had a cat that did that to me and I still wonder what happened to her.

If you want to get even with your parents, do what I did: Move to another state and drop catty hints at Christmas about how it’s their fault the kids picked on you in fourth grade because you had to carry your lunch in a grocery sack instead of a yellow-checked lunch bag or a Holly Hobby lunchbox.

The story, and later portrayed by the movie, is excellent. I read about it first in Outside back in 1993 and, like Jon Krakauer, was transfixed by the life of Chris McCandless--and for the exact same reason that Jon Krakauer was: He saw so much of himself in Chris.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I give "Into the Wild" a 125.

Go rent it if you haven’t seen it. And if you’ve seen it? Call in sick to work and rent it again.