Well, I just finished watching Into the Void: Death on Everest. It followed me watching Into the Wild.
Into the Void, I didn’t really like. Part of it was that the movie was kinda cut and dried. They hiked up to the summit of Everest, and along the way, people died. Yes, it’s tragic, but what do you expect? And with a title like that, you’re just waiting to see who’d next. It’s terrible, especially knowing it’s a documentary, so these things, in general, really happened. In and of itself gut-wrenching.
Into the Wild, on the other hand, was really good (not touch me deeply good, but good). It was written by the same guy who wrote Into the Void. *spoiler alert* I knew, before I watched it, that the protagonist dies. And even if I hadn’t you could kind of see it coming. But I can empathize with him, a young man trying to find his place. Enough so that I paperback swap’d for the book, and read it this weekend as well. Surprisingly like the book, with a lot more of the details and other anecdotes of others with the same sense for exploration (also with tragic results). But watching (and reading) about his exploits I can see that he was trying to find what in himself was missing. And perhaps, by the end, he’d found it and just couldn’t come back from the place he’d gone to.
“In reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future” – Alexander Supertramp.