'Get It Done'
A place to talk about movies--old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.
Although I thought the performances and the directing were amazing, I really disliked self-righteous, heedless Chris McCandless and felt bad for all the people he hurt along his journey.
That's why I can't watch that movie (or Grizzly Man, for that matter).
Unsurprisingly, Grizzly Man is on my list of favourite movies.
I don't necessarily think he was self-righteous. he never expected to change anyone's minds about the way they lived their life. he just did things the way he wanted to do them.
I do agree about the heedless part though. he seemed pretty oblivious to the affect he had on others.
Yeah, the bits in the movie I found upsetting were his sisters comments.
That's why I can't watch that movie (or Grizzly Man, for that matter).
Me too. Hate that kind of selfish stupidity so much.
Boy, I loved Grizzly Man. I don't think Treadwell was selfishly stupid so much as a delusional Don Quixote tilting at imagined giants.
Never saw the movie in question, though.
I could see missing Grizzly Man because Treadwell is so annoying. But there's no implication in the movie that Treadwell is admirable. Herzog is kind of notorious for believing that nature is out to kill you, and I think you leave the film pitying Treadwell, but not feeling like you should like him.
Herzog is kind of notorious for believing that nature is out to kill you
Yeah, there are numerous sequences in the film where Treadwell is waxing lyrical about how wonderful bears are and how only he understands them and how when you look into a bear's eyes you see how kind and good and gentle they are, which Herzog intercuts with close-ups of bears looking mean and predatory while his own VO narration says something to the effect of "Bears are godless killing machines."
I don't necessarily think he was self-righteous. he never expected to change anyone's minds about the way they lived their life. he just did things the way he wanted to do them.
I do agree about the heedless part though. he seemed pretty oblivious to the affect he had on others.
Self-absorbed may be a better description, though we usually think of that in the context of someone also being shallow and vapid, which he plainly was not. I never got a clear sense of whether he was so much a free spirit that it never occurred to him that vanishing from people's lives would be hurtful, or if he understood it and just didn't care at all.
I would have like Into the Wild to touch on the fact that there was a hand-operated tram 1/4 mile away from where MacCandless tried to cross the swollen river. Or that if he had a MAP of the area, he could have walked out of there.
I think the film glosses over his heedless, reckless behavior. I don't think he was self-righteous, but he was definitely naive.