The film is about a young man seeking to find who he is through testing the limits of his belief system. Christopher, the protagonist, burns his credit cards and identification cards, even his money to sever his connection to the world. He will live from the land become the man he desires to be without influence from his family, whom he doesn't tell where he's going, nor from society which seeks to dictate every step of his life. In the end Christopher's extreme determination to disconnect from the trappings of the modern world lead him to the deep belief that life is best when we share it with the people we love.
It is because Christopher took the risk to live out what he believes that he was able to discover the reality of what lay beneath his philosophy. The fact that he goes into nature reveals something pivotal in all of our journeys: our connection to the earth allows us to know what matters in our lives. Christopher cut ties with the pleasures of the world--the things that make life "easy" and yet also complicate it over time (an example being credit card debt), and is able to connect to the truth that we all belong in the world and must find our place in it.
Christopher's testing of his belief system is what is most profound as we as a people rarely know what we believe, and when we do it isn't put into action in a way that brings an awareness of ourselves, the world we live in and the meaning of life...until, often times, we are on our death beds. His disconnection from the world led to a connection with the truth of life, but unable to overcome the immense obstacles of nature he was left with no clear options of how to get out other than allowing himself to be connected to those he loved even in the midst of his last days on earth.
