Last night I could finally watch a film I had been waiting a long time to see. Ever since a friend told me Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam did the soundtrack for it I knew it had to be something special. And it was but not in the way I imagined I must say. Into the wild doesn’t glorify the ways of the loner but rather portrays the journey of a young man named Chris McCandless, who refused to live in the same manner his parents (and their parents before them) did and for that he follows his own path a path that leads him into himself, into the unknown, into the wild.
There are a number of great quotes throughout the film and I will post some of them as well as parts of the songs interpreted by Vedder for the soundtrack of the movie:
I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges. I see my father strolling out under the ochre sandstone arch, the red tiles glinting like bent plates of blood behind his head. I see my mother with a few light books at her hip, standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the wrought-iron gates still open behind her, its sword-tips black in the May air. They are about to graduate. They are about to get married. They are kids. They are dumb. All they know is they are innocent, they would never hurt anybody. I want to go up to them and say "Stop, don’t do it. She's the wrong woman, he's the wrong man. 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." I want to go up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it. But I don't do it. I want to live. I take them up like the male and female paper dolls, and bang them together at the hips like chips of flint, as if to strike sparks from them. I say, "Do what you are going to do and I will tell about it."
Excerpt I Go Back To May 1937 by Sharon Olds.
"If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, the possibility of life is destroyed."
Leo Tolstoy.
"Rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness... give me truth."
Chris expanded on the original quote by Henry David Thoreau.
“I think I need to find a bigger place
Because when you have more than you think
You need more space.”
Society, performed by Eddie Vedder.
“Why contain yourself like any other book on a shelf ?...
...The world begins where the road ends.”
Far behind by Eddie Vedder.
“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods;
There is a rapture on the lonely shore;
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more…”
Lord Byron.
"We have a greed with which we have agreed
And you think you have to want more than you need
Until you have it all you won't be free...
..Society, you're a crazy breed
Hope you're not lonely without me...
..When you want more than you have
You think you need...
...Society, have mercy on me
Hope you're not angry if I disagree."
Society Performed By Eddie Vedder.
“Such is the passage of time
Too fast to fold
And suddenly swallowed by signs
Low and behold
I’m Gonna rise up
Find my direction magnetically
I’m Gonna rise up
Throw down my haste in the road.”
Rise by Eddie Vedder.
"I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them. And work which one hopes may be of some use. Then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor. Such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children perhaps. What more can the heart of a man desire?"
Leo Tolstoy.
“Happiness is only real when shared.”
Chris McCandless.
“Death's a fierce meadowlark: but to die having made
Something more equal to centuries
Than muscle and bone, is mostly to shed weakness.”
Robinson Jeffers.
"On bended knee is no way to be free...
...Circles they grow and they swallow people whole
Half their lives they say goodnight to wives they'll never know...
...Wind in my hair, I feel part of everywhere
Underneath my being is a road that disappeared
Late at night I hear the trees, they're singing with the dead
Overhead.
Leave it to me as I find a way to be
Consider me a satellite, forever orbiting
I knew all the rules, but the rules did not know me
Guaranteed."
Guaranteed by Eddie Vedder.
