I would have appreciated this beautiful work if the end had been happy, or at least not that depressing ; Chris dying so pathetically after all the great things he has accomplished felt like kind of a waste to me.
"I don't care what you believe in, just believe in something ! No matter what..."
Well, that's what really happened. It's also why his story evokes such passionate, polarized responses from people. The people who hate his story *really* hate his story, because they too feel like it was all such a waste, and he greatly hurt so many people that cared about him by going off and dying in such a manner when it didn't have to happen. The movie really captured that at the end while he was in the throws of dying by showing a montage of all the different important people he crossed paths with on his adventures, starting with Mr. Franz who wanted to adopt him as a grandson, to Tracy in Slab City, and his parents, and sister, and Wayne back in South Dakota, and Jan Burres. You see all these people and his heart broken parents and then it cuts back to him as he lies there in his sleeping bag, staring up at the sky taking his last breaths. All these people that cared about him, and with his whole life ahead of him and so much potential. It was a tragedy. No matter what the haters say though I will never feel like he deserved it for his supposed "stupidity," or attack him for his mistakes.
It is one of the most depressing endings I've seen in a long time. And knowing that the real life Mr. Franz gave up on the idea of God and became an atheist who went back to hitting the bottle after decades of sobriety after he learned of Chris' death is even more tragic.
At the same time I think Chris just wasn't cut out for this world, with the way it is. It's like he just totally snapped. I wonder if he'd lived whether he could have ever integrated himself back into society to live any kind of a "normal" life. Maybe this is the way his destiny had to go, I don't know.
One lesson the movie teaches: if you want to learn survival skills, don't go to Emory. Go to a survival school. Another strike against college.
shareI disliked the ending as well. After two hours of ideology and optimism, his death hit you with reality. In all actuality, Chris wasn't prepared for his journey so his death made sense. It was a downer but it made the story more realistic. I know this film was based on a true story, but I looked at it from the perspective of if it were purely fictional since I didn't know the back-story beforehand.
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Well he definitely semmed prepared in the movie.
"I don't care what you believe in, just believe in something ! No matter what..."
Really, the only thing the movie showed was that he got into decent shape prior to heading to Alaska and brought a bag of rice. The Ronald Franz character gave him some supplies he'd not have brought with himself, and the fellow who dropped him off at the edge of the wilderness gave him the boots he wore. He'd never even practiced the meat preservation practices, and thus was relying on notes when attempting it for very survival.
From the Wiki entry:
The most charitable view among McCandless's detractors is that his behavior showed a profound lack of common sense. He chose not to bring a compass, something that most people in the same situation would have considered essential. McCandless was also completely unaware that a hand-operated tram crossed the otherwise impassable river a quarter of a mile from where he attempted to cross. Had McCandless known this, he could easily have saved his own life.[3]... His venture into a wilderness area alone, without adequate planning, experience, preparation, or supplies, without notifying anyone and lacking emergency communication equipment, was contrary to every principle of outdoor survival and, in the eyes of many experienced outdoor enthusiasts, nearly certain to end in misfortune.
Alaskan Park Ranger Peter Christian wrote:
When you consider McCandless from my perspective, you quickly see that what he did wasn't even particularly daring, just stupid, tragic, and inconsiderate. First off, he spent very little time learning how to actually live in the wild. He arrived at the Stampede Trail without even a map of the area. If he [had] had a good map he could have walked out of his predicament [... ] Essentially, Chris McCandless committed suicide.
Possibly the most tragic foolery of all that was how there was a tram to cross the river within a quarter mile of his attempt to cross, and he might've found some supplies at some cabins within a few miles, had he known to look for them.
He was defininately inadequately prepared, but it is by no means a given that the hand-operated tram, had he known of it, would have helped him. I read in Alaskan media back in the 90's that the tram could not be "summoned" from one side of the river to another -- in other words, you had to be on the side of the river where the cable-car was situated in order to use it by cranking it across, and that when McCandless was in the bus, the tram was in fact on the Healy side of the river. Had he known it was there, it would still have not been acessible to him.
There is debate, too, over whether he knew of the cabins or not. They were vandalized in early spring that year, and it is possible McCandless would not have found anything usable there. Police ruled him out as a suspect in the break-ins, but although bears did much of the damage, the initial entry into at least one of the cabins was effected by someone with a pickaxe chopping a hole in the roof. However, CM did not have a pickaxe, so the mystery remains.
The biggest mystery is why he did not simply walk out. He was no farther from the park service road (with a bridge across the river he could no longer ford) than he was from Healy via the Stampede Trail, and he had the additional option of going upriver to where the Tek would have been much easier to cross. Yet, he did neither of these things. One cannot rule out the possibility of either illness, injury (he did say he was injured, in his note on the bus) or both.
According to this link, the tram was secured to McCandless's side. http://www.willhiteweb.com/info/into_the_wild/christopher_mccandless_0 89.htm
Probably was an injury that prevented him from walking out. Near the end of Ron Lamothe's documentary, The Call of the Wild (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dr5ynwWxrg0), he interviews several locals (with some pretty unflattering thoughts on this matter) who said given he was in a national forest with mucho timber, they would've just lit a blaze and waited for help, and of course it adds to all the mystery as to why Chris didn't think of that either, esp given that he'd just read Walden in which Thoreau describes his own accidental starting of a forest fire at one point, causing droves of people to come put it out.
"I like to watch" Chauncey Gardiner, 'Being There'
Thanks for that link, I had not seen it before. But, the writer has a few inaccuracies -- such as the idea that CM poisoned himself with toxic plants, which we know is not the case. The other idea he has, which does not appear to be accurate, is that McCandless didn't explore the wider area on his side of the river. He spent the first month of his sojourn on the move, hiking the area in all directions (this was easier to do while the ground was frozen) before settling for good into the bus, and almost certainly knew where the highway and the park service road were -- and of course, the map he had with him also clearly showed these (but not the tram). It seems that when he was prevented from returning to Healy the way he came, he just gave up -- or was prevented (by factors unknown) from attempting an alternative.
Of course, since the writer was wrong about the toxic plants, he *could* be mistaken about the tram as well (I'm sorry now I didn't save those articles from the 90's -- they're no longer online, and I don't recall the source of the information about the tram basket), but it isn't critical because McCandless did have other options, and we're left scratching our heads wondering why he did not avail himself of any of them. His sister said no way would he have started a forest fire, but being as how he was near the river, he could have safely started a fairly significant blaze on rocks isolated from the forest proper -- enough to attract attention. As you say, he seems not to have thought of it. For a chap with a moderately high IQ, he seemed to lack practical sense in many respects.
Just for info's sake, here's the part of the documentary which addresses the issue about toxicity: http://youtu.be/Dr5ynwWxrg0, starting with a local news guy criticizing Krakauer's failure to update later copies of the book with the final results of testing, and is immediately followed with an interview with the local biochemist who did the testing, had preliminary results which seemed possibly toxic and upon which the book's supposition was based, but then later discovered none existed. Even the issue of possible mold didn't pan out.
So it's a bit baffling about the persistence of the poisoning rumor, and moreso that Sean Penn chose to utilize it so completely as well, though he may have been simply trying to show what Chris himself may have believed. All signs ultimately point to a failure to consume enough calories (esp fat) during his stay leading to ultimate starvation, which a young strong guy might have failed to note early in the process as euphoria and excitement drove him. Also wonder if he may not have contracted giardia or the like, as that would've taken a toll on his system.
Anyway... while the toxicity is clearly ruled out after the book was published, seems like something as empirical as placement of an object like the tram would be less easy to mistake, but given so many oddities with the cabins, and the failure to find even his wallet in the backpack, I imagine that it too could be bad information.
All around a truly strange, sad situation.
"I like to watch" Chauncey Gardiner, 'Being There'
"He was an utter idealist with all the unfortunate shortcomings of shortsightedness and unpreparedness, all while being capable of touching people in ways only possible with such unsustainably lofty notions. I thought this movie really did a hell of a good job capturing all aspects of this remarkable and tragic story."
A fine summation!
It's an interesting, well told story that will obviously continue to provoke debate; but life's not always about happy endings.
That`s cute, but it`s based on a true story. Life isn`t all fairy tales and ponies you know..
shareLife doesn't always equal tragic death, you know. And sometimes ''based on a true story'' doesn't exclude a prettier ending than the real one, just for audience's sake.
I don't really criticize ItW's ending, though.
"I don't care what you believe in, just believe in something ! No matter what..."
Thanks for creating this thread. It's sparked some pretty interesting debate.
I must admit that while I didn't enjoy the ending, I'm glad they didn't omit Chris' death. It was a reflective/regretful ending. It didn't try too hard to be something it wasn't: i.e. there was no grand message on idealisms of being in the wild. I think we all want to escape sometimes. People who enjoyed the film are likely to admire the courage that Chris had. Those who don't probably thought he was grossly underprepared or a little arrogant. I never felt that Penn was trying to shove "how great Chris was" down our throats... so the real benefit of the end it is open to interpretation. Hence the 'polarising views' that was earlier mentioned.
I think the thing that always gets me is how Chris did try to leave on one occasion, but was unable to because the river was flowing too fast. (Not sure if this happened in real life.) It's really the first time that he realises the fragility of man when in the wilderness. And it makes the ending a lot more bittersweet/poignant.
Some of the best movies ever made have depressing endings.
But that doesn't make them any less beautiful. On the contrary.
There is so much beauty to be found in sadness.
If you dislike movies with depressing endings, I advise you to avoid all of the masterpieces listed below.
The Green Mile
Leon
Titanic
Braveheart
Amadeus
American Beauty
Gladiator
Heat
Seven
American History X
Reservoir Dogs
Monster
Meet Joe Black
AI Artificial Intelligence
The Mist
The Descent (original version)
The Fly
The Big Blue (original version)
Terminator 2 Judgment Day
Into The Wild
Saving Private Ryan
The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button
King Kong
Sunshine
Legends Of The Fall
Carlito's Way
ET: The Extra-Terrestrial
The Blair Witch Project
Cube
The Spitfire Grill
Lilja-4-ever
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I think what you missed in the movie is one of the most heartrending notes. When Supertramp and Mr. Franz had climbed the hill making a moment for Franz he says..."One thing I"ve learned in life is forgiveness is love and when you love, God shines his light on you". At that point the sun breaks through which causes elation within them both.
At the end when Cris is lying in the Bus near death he imagines running into the arms of his parents and while there looking up at the sun it breaks through...this also happened to him on his death bed while imagining this scene. He dies with that moment of forgiveness feeling great love.
Juxtapose that with the heartbreak of having learned that happiness is real only when shared, yet dying alone...
Simply one of the great movies made in any year.
Were you listening to the Coob's story?
>If you dislike movies with depressing endings, I advise you to avoid all of the masterpieces listed below.
The Green Mile
Leon
Titanic
Braveheart
…Heat
In Heat, c'mon, spoiler alert: Pacino got the main bad guy, McCauley, and Chris escaped.
You forgot JFK! Spoiler alert: an assassination was caught on tape, and the only criminal prosecution failed.
I kinda felt sad for Neil's death in the end. I liked him. He was a good bad guy.
Need harmonic brainwaves to soothe your diligent mind? Visit bryanel.com & relax!
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There was no way this film could have possibly been a happy ending. That would have been completely stupid. I think the ending was perfect TBH.
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