I was at a party a few months back when I got into a fairly heated debate with a guy about Sean Penn’s Into The Wild. John Krakauer’s book, upon which the film is based, is a well-researched investigation into the final journey of Alexander Supertramp a.k.a. Christopher McCandless, a  young man who left society to eventually (accidentally) die in the wilderness of Alaska. The story is controversial because many see Alex as profoundly selfish and dumb, while others, like me, see his story as the ultimate expression of free will and following ones path, even if the ending is not necessarily a happy one. I was very interested to see Peter Liechti’s The Sound of Insects: Record of  a Mummy (HotDocs screenings this Saturday and Tuesday, May 5) because the description implied similarities to Into The Wild, and indeed, there are.

The Sound of Insects is an incredible movie based on a profound and surreal story. A man with no ties to other human beings goes into the wilderness with the intention of starving himself to death. This is an important distinctive difference to Into The Wild, where the young man who died did so accidentally – I believe he meant to come out of the Alaskan wilderness but the fact that he didn’t doesn’t make him stupid (the central point of my argument in said heated party debate). The man in The Sound of Insects clearly had the intention to die and as the haunting narration, crafted from the man’s own diary discovered with his corpse, says, he was dead as soon as he arrived in the woods and began to starve himself.

Most of us spend our whole day trying to survive. We go to work to earn money to pay for the roof over our head and food on our table, clothes on our back. Many of us strive for more than that–connections to others, pleasures and leisure. It is really difficult to identify with someone who is willing to give up the fight for life. And yet, this man, as he well knew, was accomplishing something braver and more unique than most of us ever will in our whole lives. To go through this process, to record it for others and to follow through with his own will are feats not many human beings can endure. At 40 days of starvation, he felt Jesus and Buddha and saluted them for their strength to return to the human race and bring back with them the enlightenment they discovered. Our protagonist had no revelations to continue to live for, but in his diary and in the artistic interpretations that followed and inform this film and Into The Wild, he left us what precious few have–a glimpse into dying.

Dying is something we all wonder about. Some people’s religion tells them things about it that they swallow whole-heartedly and never question, while others of us believe that no one knows. It’s all conjecture, but we look for those stories, accounts, that might give us just a small piece of what it will be like. Help ease our fear.

I found The Sound of Insects to be harrowing. My own interpretation is a mix of fear and ease with the text of this man’s death. What this man (who goes unnamed and identifying details of time and place are left out) and Alexander Supertramp a.k.a. Christopher McCandless left for me is that the soul and the body are indeed two separate entities. The body will not give up the soul easily and perhaps the soul can’t separate from the body simply because it wants to. You can call this separation death, and it certainly is for the body, but I find it impossible to believe that death is the end of the energy of our soul.

Your experience of this film will be unique and personal; much more so than most. I hope that you will watch it–it is beautifully crafted in a lyrical style that allows you to experience this journey into death. It might be a place that it is hard to imagine going or even wanting to, but at the same time, we all wonder and this is about as sweet of a journey as I can imagine taking down that road.

Filmmaker Peter Liechti will be on the panel I’m moderating on Monday at 1 PM, Creativity in Doc Making. Please see this film on Saturday, 6:45 PM and come armed with your questions for him on Monday.

The Sound of Insects: Record of a  Mummy website, including Rotterdam reviews

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