Into the Wild - Video Essay Analysis

 

For my Independent Project, I will be completing a 10 minute video essay analysis on the film Into the Wild. This is one of my favourite films, and the idea for this assignment was born from an essay that I wrote for a different module. I found this essay's constraints, that being 500-700 words, very constricting and it did not do the film justice.

This is the short essay that I wrote for the module, and it will form the general jist of what I'm trying to achieve. While it'll be the inspiration for the video essay, I'm sure I'll develop my points better and delve into avenues that aren't even mentioned.

Into the Wild is a biographical film telling the true story of Christopher McCandless, an American youth who struck against the grain of his capitalist, wealth-centric surroundings and banished himself to a life of frugal living and adventure. McCandless forfeits his college degree and a life of comfort under his parents’ dime, finding more value in the life outside the system than one of wage-slaving within it. He embarks on a journey from his home in Georgia, trekking alone across the country to the Alaskan wilderness.

While the fabular is quite novel and rudimentary, what I enjoy about this film is how composition and ideology merge, forming a stream of imagery that flows unimpeded towards the climax. The critiques McCandless holds of his parents and the world around him are envisioned through the film’s cinematography, particularly during the introductory sequences.

The intent of the film’s narrative is outlined from the very start by a quote: “I love not man the less, but Nature more…”. This quote fades into the first scene, in which we witness a couple in bed under the gaze of a steady-cam. The woman is awoken by the imagined whisperings of her son, begging her to help him. Distraught by this, she is met with denial and disbelief by her husband, who urges her back to sleep.

Transitioning from the scene of this woman crying and the sounds of her despair, our ears are soothed by the uplifting strings of Eddie Vedder’s Guaranteed. While the film uses its instrumental version, it is worth noting the first line of the song - ‘On bended knee is no way to be free’. We are swept away by an array of fast-moving shots on a train, recorded with a hand-held camera that shakes. We ride along the door of a freight train, watch as the grey-and-black winter landscapes wash by through the eyes of the as-of-yet unintroduced main character.

While a subtle gesture, the difference in cameras and the soundscapes that play over them is abundantly creative to me, establishing the key mentality of the main character before even meeting him. Home is stable. Yet it’s dark and miserable, heralded by sounds of sobbing and whispered undermining. The wild is shaky, yet it’s bright, with comforting music and the rhythmic, lulling ‘thnk-thnk-thnk’-ing of the train. The wild is, ultimately, the more pleasant place to be, thus giving us a means of connecting with the main character and empathizing with his decision to walk out.

With this established, the flash-back scene that follows is one beset by the negativities of his family life. It is a graduation day, yet there is no joy: the hollow sound of clapping is underpinned by just as many disinterested faces as it is smiling; the microphone announcing the names of the graduates has an uncomfortable feedback ring; Christopher’s father does little else but frown and look around bitterly, while his mother seems more concerned with putting up happy appearances than celebrating.

This is further explored in the first-person narrative sequence in which Christopher reads a piece focused on the foolishness of his parents. “I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges” is the first line, and this strips away any intimacy or pride that Christopher may have felt toward his graduation day. Despite this being his day, it becomes theirs - this is the end of a path they set themselves on years in the past, the fruition of their supposed labours. This is not his victory. They churned their child through the system and now they can gratify themselves with the knowledge that they have succeeded, despite their son’s unhappiness. The way he describes the colleges they alere (“red tiles glinting like bent plates of blood”, “wrought-iron gates … sword-tips black in the May air”) defines exactly how he sees these institutes.

The sequence reminds me of Rorshach’s journals from Watchmen. “They are about to get married. They are kids. They are dumb. All they know is they are innocent” is how he describes his parents graduating. In this one narration, Chris collates his parents with those in power, merging their experiences into one and thus critiquing the system as a sum.

As a result, the words that follow are directed at the system he is trying to escape as opposed to his parents specifically. “Stop. Don’t do it. … You are going to do things you cannot imagine you would ever do. You are going to do bad things to children. You are going to suffer in ways you never heard of. You are going to want to die.”

“But I don’t do it,” he says, “I want to live”. Thus, the film is charged with his efforts to tell them, to tell the system how he feels not through words but through his actions. By leaving the meatgrinder of Capitalist society and deviating from the norm, he strikes back at it in an attempt to find himself. He does, but it costs him his life.

He died under a sign carved in wood, part of which read:

“And now, after two rambling years comes the final and greatest adventure. The climactic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual revolution.

No longer to be poisoned by civilization, he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild.”