The new theme is Survival, and Kit starts us off with a film that defines it in the loneliest way possible. Sean Penn’s Into the Wild follows Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch), a top-of-his-class graduate who rejects his parents’ version of success, gives away his savings, burns his IDs, and sets out across America under the alias Alexander Supertramp. His goal: Alaska. His test: how much of life’s meaning can be found when you strip away everything else.
At first it feels like a road movie—the kind of restless, post-college freedom trip that turns into myth. Chris meets travelers, field workers, drifters, and an elderly widower (Hal Holbrook, quietly heartbreaking) who sees his younger self in the boy. Each encounter offers him connection, stability, maybe even love. But he keeps leaving. “It wasn’t in his plan,” Kit says. “And sometimes you have to see what happens when you walk past the plan.”
From wheat fields to river rapids, from impromptu jobs to illegal kayak runs through the Grand Canyon, McCandless becomes a portrait of youthful conviction. Cade notes how the film captures that grey space between bravery and naivety: “He’s doing everything people tell you not to do—and somehow it keeps working, until it doesn’t.”Kit connects personally to the film’s search for autonomy. “Authority is a grey subject,” she says. “Sometimes honesty and curiosity open more doors than rules ever could.” Having backpacked after college herself, she recognizes that magnetic impulse to find out who you are when no one’s watching. The film’s true power lies in that recognition: adventure as mirror, not escape.
Cade points out how carefully Sean Penn paces loneliness. “For a movie about isolation, it’s full of warmth,” he says. “Every side character is a lesson he could have stayed for.” The cinematography—endless skylines, cracked deserts, the green hush of Alaska—feels like both invitation and warning. Eddie Vedder’s soundtrack hums through it all like a heartbeat.At 147 minutes, it’s long, and you feel it. “It’s beautifully slow,” Cade says, “but not an easy weeknight watch.” Kit agrees: “You need space for it. The pacing makes sense artistically, but you have to surrender to it.” Still, that stretch is part of the experience—the time it takes for silence to start talking back.
When Chris finally reaches Alaska, he finds an abandoned bus and the solitude he’s chased. He hunts, writes, and reflects until a small mistake—poisoned berries—turns enlightenment into tragedy. In his journal he scribbles the line that defines the film: “Happiness only real when shared.” By the time he realizes it, the river back is impassable. The same wild that made him feel free becomes the thing that keeps him there.
For Kit, that ending reframes the entire story. “He didn’t fail at survival,” she says. “He just learned too late that surviving isn’t the same as living.” Cade adds, “It’s the quiet paradox—he discovers connection through isolation. That’s why it lingers.”nto the Wild is an endurance test for both its protagonist and its audience—part travel diary, part moral study. Kit calls it “a film that reminds you to question every ‘should.’” Cade describes it as “arthouse survival—hard to rewatch, impossible to forget.” Both rate it 7/10: essential once, maybe never again, but it stays with you.
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