Into the wild

After graduating from university, 22-year-old top student and athlete Christopher McCandless gives away all his possessions and savings to charity and hitchhikes across the US to Alaska to live alone in the wilderness.

Christopher's journey takes him from the wheat fields of South Dakota along the Colorado River to California. Along the way, he meets several colorful characters on the fringes of American society who influence his way of thinking. He eventually ventures alone into the Alaskan wilderness, where everything he has seen, learned and felt finally culminates in a way he could never have expected.

The 2007 film is based on the book of the same name by Jon Krakauer, which interprets a true, if contested, story. It asks whether Christopher was a heroic adventurer, a naïve idealist, a rebellious 1990s Thoreau, a fearless risk-taker or just someone who wrestled with the difficult balance between man and nature.

Director Sean Penn has made a movie about all of us who somehow answer the call of the wild. The movie has a heavy mood and a thick atmosphere but unfortunately lacks all the depth that the question really requires.

Whether it's the story or the beautiful natural images in the film that make young people flock to the bus still standing thirty extremely difficult to hike kilometers into the wilderness just north of Denali National Park in Alaska is hard to say. However, it is clear that this movie touches some people more than others.