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I can’t listen to Porcelain by Moby without picturing a secluded beach and reminiscing about roads less traveled. Somewhere halfway through Danny Boyle’s sun-drenched film The Beach, there’s one scene that captures a sense of awe at life’s extraordinary moments, something I think we need to feel more of. In a world where holidays (or even life itself) are often neatly packaged in all-inclusive, predictable deals, The Beach stands out for showing the opposite. It’s not about tourism – it’s about living, wildly.

Led by a dapper young Leonardo DiCaprio, fresh from the success of Titanic and accompanied by a truly stellar soundtrack I still listen to on long bus journeys, The Beach starts as an adventure into the unfamiliar. A restless Richard (DiCaprio) ditches the daily grind in search of something more, and drifts through Thailand on a relentless quest for a feeling he can’t quite name.

“We were heading for the great unknown,” Richard says, the hedonistic pursuit of freedom lingers through warm-hued scenes as he hauls a backpack across south-east Asian backstreets. A hand-drawn map leading to a hidden beach might verge on cliche on the adventure front, but my best real-life traveling moments really did come about from unexpected encounters. That curiosity of something different from home feels personal to me in this sense, but you don’t have to be a hostel-dwelling nomad for this film to resonate.

At the heart of it is the gamble of trusting in uncertainty, a longing I’ve seen in many intrepid folk. If you’ve ever been lucky enough to experience the payoff, you know the feeling: cue Moby.

The film is also dark from the get-go. There are a lot of terrible reviews, and you’ll have to look past some dodgy CGI which exists as a firm reminder this film was shot almost 30 years ago. But several decades on, The Beach still captures the raw spirit of travel, and it makes me feel something every time – pure nostalgia. Maybe travelling is meant to be messy and exhilarating, exactly like writer Alex Garland imagined in the 1996 book behind this film.

Every time I rewatch it, the scathing critique it offers of modern-day tourism also feels louder. The Beach prophesies the future horrors that mass tourism would spread across the world, from the far-flung beaches of Bali to Cancún. In that sense, the film isn’t just about seeking paradise; it’s also about escaping the “parasites” of mainstream holiday-making and a world where people leave their homes only to sit in comfort in another country instead.

“I understand more clearly than ever why we were so special, why we kept our secret,” Richard reflects, giving viewers a glimpse of a holier-than-thou backpacker vibe that threads through the movie. “Because if we didn’t, sooner or later, we’d turn it into this. Cancers … parasites … eating up the whole fucking world.”

One of the most brilliant aspects of the film is also its irony. The escape from this parasitic world comes in the form of a community of misfit travellers, led by Sal (Tilda Swinton), who seemingly live in harmony on a cannabis-filled island, free of real-world constraints. Cue more aesthetic noughties tracks, and chaos. Yet Richard describes his island life as “a beach resort for people who don’t like beach resorts”, failing to notice it’s a re-creation of the same thing they’re escaping, just in a different form.

It all soon unravels into a fever dream anyway – the fragility of their idealistic world falling away as each gentle wave laps on to the shoreline. Ultimately, humans don’t quite fit into the utopia they long for, and the pursuit of the untouched can never be truly fulfilled. Infidelity, shootings and death ensue, but what did we expect? A utopian Thai island dominated by westerners with a God complex was never meant to have a happy ending. In a selfish effort to protect the beauty of the island, the characters lose it all – perhaps because it wasn’t theirs to begin with.

In the greatest irony, the beach where this film was actually set in Thailand is now packed with tourists inspired by the scene I raved about earlier. I doubt Boyle meant for that to happen, but the result feels like the film’s final critique of human nature. Yet just before the credits roll, that nostalgic glint of adventure floods back once again. The Beach is my feelgood film, perhaps not because paradise might exist, but because the longing for that Porcelain-infused feeling never goes away.

• The Beach is available to rent digitally in the US and on Disney+ in the UK and Australia