Into the Wild

Favorite scene from the movie...Holbrook and Hirsch on the rocks. Holbrook says with tender wisdom "...from the bits and pieces I've put together from what you've told me about your family, your mother and dad, and I know you got your problems with the church too - but there is some kind of bigger thing that we can all appreciate and it sounds like you don't mind calling it God - but when you forgive, you love. And when you love, God's light shines on you..." and then the clouds break and the light shines through a beautiful rainbow and they laugh together, so deeply connected to each other in that moment, but they know it won't last.

• The music - much of it written and performed by Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam. His voice hits you from the opening scene with it's deep baritone timbre and haunting lyrics.


• The scenery - shot on location around the country including Alaska, Oregon, Nevada, California, South Dakota. It is so stunning and real it's almost hard on the eyes.


• The literature - Tolstoy, London, Thoreau - great quotes and beautiful narration throughout the story.


• The young girl he sings a duet with on stage (Angel from Montgomery - love the Bonnie Rait/John Prine version of that song too).


• Real acting - Hal Holbrook's eyes in the scene in the truck saying goodbye. Those red brimmed eyes, full with tears, but not overflowing really get to me. Can that moment really be acting? A heartbreaking moment of one friend saying goodbye to another that I'll never forget.
  
• The heartbroken sister - who has to do a balancing act between her parents world and their grief and her brother who she longs for. In many ways she is far more insightful about her brother than he is about everything else. She also comments about her mother's pain. She says "I fear for the mother in her, instincts that seem to sense the threat of a loss, so huge and irrefutable that the mind balks to take it's measure" which is brilliant and beyond what a young girl her age should have understood about her mom.
  
• Emile Hirsch transformation on screen from boy to man - I read he lost 41 lbs. Loved how he portrayed Christopher's nature, how silly he was, the scene where he is eating the apple, singing "Trailers for Sale or Rent", his kindness towards people who fall in love with him throughout his journey, his passion.


• Movie better than the book - that rarely happens.
  

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods;

There is a rapture on the lonely shore;

There is a society, where none intrudes,

By the deep sea, and music in its roar:

I love not man the less, but Nature more...

-Lord Byron