Into the Wild ...

Just finished watching Into the Wild by Sean Pean.
My age ... my generation. The guy was 5 months older than me. Clearly disturbed, clearly brilliant ... like so many people I know/knew. I was down in Bogotà when he was on his way out west. I got back to states to finish school, and he was already heading north. I was walking the streets of Paris as he was starving in his Magic Bus. Somewhere in between, we both saw the first Gulf War announced on live television. Both of us disconnected already from that country. Both of us on our journey otherwhere. He in his way and I in mine. Both of us fleeing our parents and the culture of hypocrisy that we grew up in. The parents change, mine did at least. It seems that his did as well, though he did not live to see. The culture remains the same.
The enemies change now, shifting ever more quickly just like computer chips. Ahhh when I was a young man we knew who the enemy was: those god damn pinko facist commies. Whatever the hell that means. But that's what I was. Think different: you're a commie. Sounds like a joke doesn't it, and it half was. And it half was not. Any idea which did not fit, put you into the category of those who were unamerican. Was it worse in the fifties? Perhaps legally. As a teenager, with the added weight of adolescent conformism, it all remained about the same.
I came out of high school ... feeling superior? But nowhere to go with it? I don't know. It was only when I left the country that my possibilities seemed to open. When I came back after a year in Colombia, I was already gone. I was already a stranger in my country. Un etranger. The colony had been implanted in out minds. Even if I hadn't been with N, I would have blown off somewhere. Maybe just like supertramp. Maybe going to France saved me from a similar doom. I was weaker of course, I never would have given the money to charity, but that would not have stopped me from following a similar spiral.
In any case, the film is beautifull, there are scenes that made me cry simply from the beauty of the image. Like when he is shaking his head as he bathes, the beaded water spinning out under the sun. Breathtaking.