MovieChat Forums > Return to the Wild: The Chris McCandless Story Discussion > Revelatory

Revelatory

posted 10 years ago by Flora_Poste
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I was deeply moved by this documentary on Netflix. As a survivor of a similar abusive, dysfunctional family dynamic, I know how parental abuse changes you and reverberates throughout your life, regardless of how you choose to live your life.

The truth of the violent, abusive childhood that Chris and his siblings endured was obscured in the famous book and movie that were made about his life. In those earlier works, the motivation for Chris to cut himself off from his family of origin was concealed, and I think Chris would not have wanted it that way. As a lover of truth, he hated lies of every kind. I'm grateful to his siblings for stepping up and setting the records straight about the actual life that Chris lived, correcting the sanitized version that the world came to know.

[–] whoanelly (1592) 4 years ago

The truth was hidden in the book because his sister wanted it that way. I’m reading her book right now, and cannot believe how she repeatedly does the very thing she derides her parents for doing. She keeps taking them back into her life, while acknowledging their toxicity and acting as though she isn’t just as co-dependent on their twisted drama as they are.

Her brother cut them out of his life because they were toxically abusive and manipulative. But she just can’t bring herself to do the same. She prevented Krakauer from publishing the truth. Then, Sean Penn was so enamored of Krakauer’s book without the abuse being exposed, that he totally bought into his own idea of Chris and didn’t want the truth about his parents to spoil the meditative film he had imagined. Both men did a disservice to Chris’s memory, but with so much help from Carine McCandless.

Her repeated permitting of her parents sick behavior into her life and the lives of her children is so frustrating to read, again and again. When she finally cuts them off, it just feels too late. Don’t get me wrong, I am glad, for her sake and those of her children, that she finally did cut them out of her life. But by the time I got to that part, I wasn’t sure if I even cared anymore.