Great film ... utterly sad.
A gifted, thoughtful, young man unable to connect ... fleeing into the wilderness to find ... and in the end, realizing too late: Happiness only real when shared.
A searing family background scarred his receptors ... unable to see love, he was unable to receive it or give it ... all along the way, folks reach out to him with love - the most poignant being Ron Franz (Hal Holbrook).
Shunning, running from, love, Chris (Emile Hirsch) isolates himself in the wilderness of Alaska, finding an abandoned bus - symbolic? A bus going nowhere?
At first, it works ... but then the terrible realities of the wilderness overwhelm - killing a moose but unable to preserve the meat, the lack of game ultimately, misreading a book on edible plants and eating a poisonous one, the river so easily forded going into the wilderness is a raging torrent when he wants to leave - another symbol? Some journeys relentlessly take us and allow no escape?
At the start of his odyssey, he abandons everything - gives away his bank account, abandons his car, burns his cash and Social Security card, and then adopts a new name, Alexander Supertramp. When asked about his family, he replies easily, "I no longer have a family."
Yet in the end, on one of his final notes left in the bus, he signs off with his given name. Something found, precious and good, not in the wilderness, but in his own heart. At last to embrace his name and his family. What else can any of us do? There is no running away from such things, but only love and forgiveness as Ron Franz put it: when you forgive, you love; when you love, you forgive, neither of which Chris could do, until in those lonely, dying, moments in the bus.
Is this a portrait of America - a nation of nomads, bowling alone, searching, seeking, looking - a world of gadgets for many, an abandoned bus for others ... alone, alone, alone?
Hats off to Sean Penn and Paramount Vantage for bringing this fine book to film.
