The Culture Club (Film: Into The Wild) February 15, 2009

This is the next study session in a series of culture studies where something from the media (e.g. a book, a film, a music album) is discussed from a Christian perspective but the session is for people of all faiths and people of no faith at all who want to explore the message behind the media.

The session will start at 5:30pm when we will watch the film on the big screen and the discussion starts at 8:15pm.

There is no charge for this event and is open to all who are agwed 15 or older.

FILM INFO
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(excerpt from Stepehn Innes' Damaris article @ http://www.damaris.org/content/content.php?type=5&id=661)

"One of the joys of being a regular cinemagoer is that every year there is at least one film that I enter the cinema to watch without much expectation or anticipation, but leave the cinema feeling surprised, challenged, moved and deeply grateful for having had the privilege of seeing a truly great story unfold onscreen. This year, that film was Into the Wild. Nominated for, and winner of, multiple awards (though inexplicably snubbed by the Oscars in the Best Picture category), the film is richly deserving of its recognition as one of the very best of 2007. Reflective, poignant, provocative and deeply sad, this is a film that tells its delicate story beautifully, avoiding cheap sentiment and refusing to manipulate the viewer into accepting a particular view of its enigmatic lead character.

Faithfully adapted from the bestselling novel by Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild tells the true story of Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch), a university graduate from a successful but troubled family, who impulsively decides to forgo middle-class life as he knew it in favour of an adventure trip to the Alaskan wildnerness. But this is not your average post-graduation road trip. McClandless decides to give away all that he has (including a large education fund, which he gives to Oxfam), change his name (to ‘Alexander Supertramp’) and hitchhike his way to Alaska. Once there, he intends to literally live off the land and not be found by anyone. The majority of the film is the story of his two-year journey, and in particular it recounts the stories of people he meets along the way as interludes to his life in the wild. While at first the ‘idyllic’ Alaskan wilderness facilitates his dream of freedom from all that encumbered him in the past, we soon see that ideal turn into tragedy. Through a series of misjudgments of the harsh realities of nature (through no fault of his own), he finds himself trapped. . . . And yet, the film also has a beautiful, simple, sweet spirit of possibility and delight in what life can offer, such as the experience of freedom, of genuine human encounter, and of seeing God in the actions of another."

Trailer:



Previous Sessions
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This series continues to be popular. Previous evenings have looked at "Atonement" (film), "Iron Man" (film), "The Lives of Others" (film), "Pan's Labyrinth" (film), "Utopian Dreams" (book), "Breaking and Entering" (film), "Little Miss Sunshine" (film), "Evan Almighty" (film), "Babel" (film), "The Zahir" (book), "Paradise Now" (film), "Life on Mars" (TV series), "Collateral" (film), "Arthur and George" (book), "Moulin Rouge" (film), the Robbie Williams album "Intensive Care", "Lost in Translation" (film), "Whale Rider" (film), "The Incredibles" (film), "The Da Vinci Code" (book), the U2 album "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb" and "Chocolat" (film).