But I also think, if we look into our hearts, all of us, every one of us is winging it.
"We're all going to die, all of us. What a circus! That alone should make us love each another, but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by life's trivialities. We are eaten up by nothing." - Bukowski
And on the other hand even if you tell the story of someone/something reprobable, it is their story, and stories are “virus” for our empathic minds - so we end up understanding and siding with the wrong ideas / actions when they are explored (because to explore them by focusing om them turns them into the protagonist of the story).
It seems quite essential to any narrative medium.
In other words, it isn't essential at all. Spielberg could have made a movie that represented only the helplessness, misery, and horror and left it at that.
HST is a great subject. But really, he was documenting a madman he travelled with more than anything with a few spots of other occurrences in between.
If you haven’t before, I recommend reading the compilations of his letters. He was a much more “normal” person than his literary persona. I distinctly recall letters to his mum about being proud about having paid his credit cards off finally after his... endeavours.
That does not make him less attractive - but you would have to be already in a very bad shape if you felt any compulsion to emulate him.
Its entirely possible that I found it revealing because before that all my reading/viewing had led me to believe a different reality of how Romance and Sexual Attraction work.