Modern Transcendentalism

The very first thing I thought of when I heard Christopher wanted to spend two years in the wild was Henry David Thoreau's Walden. About two minutes later in the movie, viewers get a close-up of the books he brought with him to the bus, and Walden stands out in the stack. I love that Sean Penn set up Christopher's character to be a modern Thoreau or Emerson because (as we can see from all the cities and civilization) transcendentalism is kind of a dying art. In some scenes, the cinematographer shot close-ups of Chris's face to show his reactions to the beauty of the nature that surrounded him. The tears in his eyes really gripped me as a viewer and showed me that he understood everything Thoreau wrote about nature. We sometimes got extreme close-ups of just his eyes during scenes such as these, which made me think that he had the "transient eyeball" that Emerson refers to in Nature.

It didn't surprise me that Chris earned an A in a class about Apartheid; the scene where he spoke to the farmer in the bar about society reminded me of this. I think Chris saw his own family as Apartheid and, by leaving, he forced his parents to undergo a smaller version of the Truth and Reconciliation Conmmission. In one of the final scenes of the movie, we see his dad sitting in the street, and the cinematographer gives us a close-up of his shoes with no socks. Like those who went on trial at the TRC, he literally put himself in the shoes of his victim and owned up to what he had done. However, in the last moments of Chris's life, he imagines himself running into the arms of his parents and being disappointed because they still wouldn't see the world through new eyes. Such was the case with the criminals on trial at the TRC. Were they truly sorry for what they did, or did they just want amnesty? I think his parents simply desired the latter. Chris knows this, but he doesn't blame his parents. In fact, he even says at one point in the movie that they were blinded by society, just as the police officers and goverment officials in South Africa were manipulated into believing Apartheid's demands were ligit. Nonetheless, Chris embraced them at least for wanting amnesty, which I think is very mature and honorable.

The close-up of the final look on Christopher's face reminded me of my favorite quote by Henry David Throeau. He writes very beautifully, "If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy...that is your success." The welcoming smile that Chris has on his face in his last moment of life breathes this quotation. He literally greets "the night" (or death) "with joy," just as he lived every day to its fullest. Christopher is the rare type of person I am happy for when death approaches, because I know how amused he would be to enter another world. After transcending his body so many times while surrounded by nature, he finally recieved the opportunity to do so literally. This reinforces my belief that Christopher is the closest person to Thoreau and Emerson the modern world has seen.

Paige Brinkmann