into the wild movie

 Into The Wild

In 1990, Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch), a college graduate from Emory University, rejects a materialist and conventional life. He destroys all of his credit cards and identification documents, donates nearly his entire savings of $24,000 to Oxfam, and sets out on a cross-country drive in his well-used, but reliable Datsun to experience life in the wilderness. However, McCandless does not tell his wealthy, but unloving parents Walt (William Hurt) and Billie McCandless (Marcia Gay Harden) nor his sister Carine (Jena Malone) what he is doing or where he is going and does not communicate with them thereafter, leaving them to become increasingly anxious and eventually desperate.
Along the way, McCandless' automobile is caught in a flash flood causing him to abandon it and start hitchhiking instead. He burns what remains of his dwindling cash supply at the side of Lake Mead, Arizona and assumes a new name: Alexander Supertramp. Later, he encounters a hippie couple, Jan Burres (Catherine Keener) and Rainey (Brian H. Dierker), with whom he forms a friendship. McCandless then makes his way to Carthage, South Dakota and decides to work for a contract harvesting company owned by Wayne Westerberg (Vince Vaughn), but he is forced to leave after Westerberg is arrested for satellite piracy. McCandless then travels to the Colorado River and, though he is told by park rangers that he may not kayak down the river without a license, he ignores their warnings and paddles downriver until he eventually arrives in Mexico. There, his kayak is lost in a sandstorm and he crosses back into the United States on foot.
Unable to easily hitchhike, he starts traveling via freight train to Los Angeles. Not long after arriving, however, he starts feeling "corrupted" by modern civilization and decides to leave. Later, McCandless is forced to switch his traveling method back to hitchhiking after he is beaten brutally by a railroad bull. In December 1991, McCandless arrives at Slab City, and encounters Jan and Rainey again. At The Slabs, he meets Tracy Tatro (Kristen Stewart), a teenage girl who is attracted to McCandless. After the holidays, McCandless decides to continue heading for Alaska, much to everyone's sadness. While camping near Salton City, California, McCandless encounters Ron Franz (Hal Holbrook), a retired man who recounts the story of the loss of his family during his service in the United States Army. He now occupies his time in a workshop as an amateur leather worker. He teaches McCandless the art, resulting in the production of a belt summarizing his travels, and ending in a letter "N" which he explains means "north", i.e. Alaska. After spending several months with Franz, McCandless decides to leave for Alaska and Franz takes him the first 100 miles and gives him camp and travel gear. On parting Franz offers to adopt McCandless as his grandchild, but McCandless tells him that they should discuss this after McCandless returns from Alaska and departs.
In April 1992, after nearly two years on the road and away from his family, McCandless crosses a stream in a remote area of Alaska and sets up camp in an abandoned Fairbanks Transit bus which he encounters. Initially McCandless is exhilarated by the isolation, the beauty of nature around and the thrill of living off the land as the spring thaw arrives. He hunts wild animals with a .22 rifle, reads books, and keeps a diary of his thoughts. At first he is willing to make sacrifices, sparing the life of a female caribou when he spots her offspring. However life becomes harder and he becomes less discerning; his supplies start to run out and although he kills a moose he does not know the correct process for smoking the meat; as a result it is all spoiled and infested with flies and maggots. He realizes that nature is also harsh and uncaring and concludes that true happiness can only be found when shared.
In the pain of realization, McCandless seeks to return from the wild to his friends and family, but, to his despair, he finds that the stream which he crossed in the snow has become wide, deep, and violent due to the thaw, and thus making him unable to cross. McCandless returns to the bus-shelter now as a prisoner. Having previously insisted on being self-sufficient, he is no longer in control of his fate and can only hope for help from the outside.
By the end of the summer, McCandless' supplies run out and he is forced to gather and eat roots and plants. He has a book to help him to distinguish edible from inedible, but he confuses similar plants and becomes violently ill as a result. His book informs him that his mistake will cause him "starvation and death". In his final hours, McCandless continues to document his process of self-realization and accepts his fate, as he imagines his family for one last time. He writes a farewell to the world and crawls into his sleeping bag to die. Two weeks later, his body is found by moose hunters. A month later, Carine returns her brother's ashes by airplane from Alaska to the eastern seaboard in her backpack.