Into the Wild

Chris / Alex McCandless wrote well.

"The very basic core of a man's living spirit is hit passion for adventure.
The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun."

"You are wrong if you think Joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience."

This is from the book "Into the Wild" and the above quotes are Alex's own.
The last quote he negates before death when he notes:

"And so it turned out that only a life similar to life of those around us, merging with it without a ripple, is genuine life, and that an unshared happiness is not happiness... And this was most vexing of all. HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED."

Did he have to go through his ordeal to realise this? Could he have been one of the very few who actually realised this? I ask because most of us don't know the other possibility, of living without society and love.


The book is quite excellent. It's not as glorious as the movie but is sobering. Jon Krakauer is the author and he expressed his compassion for the kid in the introduction/ foreword. There are two chapters which I really liked. One in which Jon talks of other weirdos/ loners/ pursuers and the other when he describes his youth and his journey to Alaska to conquer Devil's Thumb. Fantastic stuff.
I enjoyed the part where when he came back to the town and recited his tale to the town folk, they didn't seem to care :)
I relished the part where he compared his ... well... this is the statement (He was 23 years old then):
"At that stage of my youth, death remained as abstract a concept as non-Euclidean geometry or marriage."

This book and books like this make one realise how shallow a city-dweller's journey can be. Yes.

127 Hours

Too many spoilers. Read at will.

My eyes were wet twice during the movie; first during the flooding scene and the next actually made me flinch, when the family of 3 start running towards Aron (James Franco).
The movie itself didn't impress me for the first half but Danny Boyle did something brilliant towards the second. Cropping three scenes into once frame, the music, Sigur Ros and AR Rehman and Jame Franco outdid himself.
During the first half I liked James but not too much, during the second he blew me away. I loved the flashbacks, the dreams/ hallucinations, Rehman's background score. I knew, like many others that he makes it out alive but the movie still gripped me.
It will definitely be a memorable movie. Cheers to Aron Ralston and the spirit within us all.

Special mention to the flashbacks and hallucinations. Absolutely brilliant.

There are odd things I liked about the movie:
The fact that none of the girls were pretty.
The masturbation scene. Some would be humoured by it and I thought it completely natural - momentary pleasure can be wonderful.
The way Aron ran off after saying goodbye to the girls towards the beginning of the movie.
The flashback when he chose not to receive his mother's phone call.
The premonition of him with his son.
The way Aron kisses the hooks when he approaches the cliff after he had sawed off his hand.
How swiftly the canyon flooded, how easily he freed himself and how believably he made it to his girlfriend's house just for the audience to understand that it's some sort of a dream.
The ants on his face.
How the audience is forced to gasp when he drops his bottle of water.

Cannot forget how the family of three ran towards him :) - That scene just gnawed at me from my insides. Something so animalistic about how they ran to help Aron.

The Matrix

It's 2011 and I'm watching a movie that was released in 1999. This movie is still cool.
"C'mon - Stop trying to hit me and hit me!"
"Everybody falls the first time."
Some of the dialogues are embedded.
In 1999, the world did not have Google. Internet was a novelty. America was free of terrorism. India was still a 'bad-land'. People didn't care about China.
The Wachowski brothers decided to market the idea of the world being a dream in which we are stuck. This idea may have influenced people the world over. This movie, I want to believe, somehow made people become independent.. in their thoughts and actions.
The movie - Cool. That's it. Stunningly intelligent in the nuances planted at certain junctures. Great effects, fantastic direction, crisp, great story and rather excellent acting by Laurence Fishburne and Keanu Reeves.
I wonder if it will retain its coolness 20 years from now :)

The best quote of all : "There is no spoon."

Into the Wild

I'm appalled at myself for not having written about this movie. It has been one of the most influential movies in my life - and that is the reason you should watch it.
It is based on a true story based on that of Christopher McCandless. A man, disillusioned, curious and gaining consciousness decided to leave society - to a degree. He met random people on his journeys with his eventual goal of going to Alaska, or as he said it "Alaskalaska"

It's difficult to not let my emotion cloud this 'review' but I shall try. Emile Hirsch, Sean Penn and Eddie Vedder created magic. The music and the lyrics breathes life into dull patches and gets the viewer interested in trying to understand this creature called 'Alexander Supertramp'.

One issue with the progress of society, especially over the last 100 years, has been the influx of people, technology, communication, capitalism and a bull-headed focus on getting ahead. Christopher saw what was happening around him and disliked the materialism that surrounded him and just wanted to go away from all these accepted rituals of daily life.
MGMT's song, Time to Pretend, was written well -
" Yeah it's overwhelming, but what else can we do? Get jobs in offices and wake up for the morning commute... We're fated to pretend."

People who don't like the movie have said, ' Ya.. it's about this guy who goes to Alaska right?'
People who like the movie sound like Jeff Bridges and say, ' Just watch the movie man'


Special thanks to Eddie Vedder for moaning and groaning through his simple, hearty lyrics that instantly makes me question our society.

Just watch the movie man.