Into the Wild
I admire Jon Krakauer's book Into the Wild quite a bit, and so I was wary about seeing the movie. What I most like about the book is the interplay between Krakauer's sensibility and Chris McCandless's story -- Krakauer understands the mix of idealism, frustration, and foolhardiness that led McCandless to abandon as many of the accoutrements of civilization as he could, dub himself "Alexander Supertramp", and set out with very little preparation or knowledge, eventually heading for the wilderness of Alaska -- and yet Krakauer is also different enough in temperament from McCandless to be able to provide a counter-narrative through his wrestling with the implications of McCandless's actions, ideas, and mistakes. It's not as drastic a counter-narrative as Werner Herzog provides the story of a somewhat similar Alaskan dreamer, Timothy Treadwell , in Grizzly Man , but it's enough to make the book compelling and thought-provoking. Alas, the movie Sean P...
