Issue date: 11/7/07 Section: Aggielife

Media Credit: File - The Battalion [Click to enlarge]

What are your plans after college? For generations, this simple question has brought many a 22-year-old to their knees. Today's society expects people to obtain a lucrative job and live a life centered on acquiring a multitude of unnecessary objects. These expectations have caused many people to go through a panicky identity crisis in their life - they feel like they don't belong, like they're not understood or maybe they're just confused. In the midst of a demanding, materialistic society, many people have found solace in the reverent words of poets such as Henry David Thoreau and Lord Byron about escaping into nature.

Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch) graduated from Emory University in 1990 and devised a plan to derail the path his life was on. McCandless was determined to find true happiness in life by cutting all ties with society and his fraudulent parents. After graduation, he gave his $24,000 that was supposed to go toward law school to charity. He burned all forms of personal identification and money, abandoned his car and changed his name. The only person who knew about his plan was his younger sister, Carine (Jena Malone), who didn't tell her parents anything about her brother's intentional disappearance.

McCandless spent two years undetected by his family while hitchhiking to Alaska. Along the way, he met several people who would shape his life and help him achieve understanding in a world in which he felt lost. After experiencing nature without any influence from the material world and meeting a rainbow of different characters, McCandless realized that happiness wasn't real if it was spent in complete solitude. McCandless' affecting ideals and two-year disappearance influenced his parents and those he met to rethink their own lives.

Emile Hirsch makes his debut in a starring role with an unforgettable performance in a tragically true story. Hirsch portrays

McCandless as a troubled young man who comes from a materialistic family and desperately wants to rid himself of societal expectations. Hirsch's heartwarming, honest performance will elicit floods of tears and cause audiences to question their own lives.

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