Good Night, Alexander Supertramp

Tea: Assam Melody

Music: Eddie Vedder, selections from the "Into the Wild" soundtrack

Time: Night.

Started out to see a play tonight. It was weathered out, so plans shifted. We went to see "Into the Wild." (Warning: Spoilers follow.)

I knew nothing about the film beyond that it's based on Jon Krakauer's book of the same title, which is about a young idealist's trip to Alaska -- shedding his life savings beforehand and his wordly possessions along the way -- and his death there.

Loved the book when I read it a couple of years ago -- which, of course, meant a bit of trepidation at seeing the film, wondering if it could measure up. It does. There's not a false note among the performances, and the cinematography is gorgeous.

But what Sean Penn (who directed and wrote the screenplay) did best was let the story speak for itself without augmentation.

There is music, yes (and Eddie Vedder's voice sounds great, playing against a mandolin), but it's for punctuation and not to prod the audience into this or that emotion.

There is violence, in spots, but it's not done in freeze-frame detail. Ditto the nudity, which comes off as anything but prurient.

And there is sudden, sickening horror, when the protagonist realizes that he has fatally poisoned himself by eating the wrong tubers (despite his best precautions; he didn't mindlessly begin eating flora right and left, but the poisonous plant very closely resembled an edible one). But even after that realization, there are moments of grace in his fading life.

Penn doesn't tell people "Wow, this is sad. Feel sad," or, "Wow, this is inspiring. You should want to be just like this guy." And so, because we're not being hammered over the head with how we should feel, we're allowed to feel the whole range: the soaring, the heartbreaking and the downright funny.

The film doesn't suggest that people chuck off their day-to-day lives -- and the people in those lives --and hit the road. As much living as Christopher McCandless did, in not a lot of time, he figured out too late that life's in the relationships, not just in the experiences. His unexplained absence devastated his parents, who begin the film as unsympathetic characters but soften as they are worn down by waiting for words that never came. I can't even imagine what the news of his death did to them and to his sister.

I suppose if there is a message, it's both simple and complex.

We live most fully when there is still something to pursue. But while you're out chasing those dreams, remember those who wait for you to come back from the hunt.