CAPTAIN FANTASTIC by Campbell Dalglish, [email protected]
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FILM REVIEW: CAPTAIN FANTASTIC by Campbell Dalglish, [email protected] In an age when the biggest fear is the radicalization of youth, "Captain Fantastic," written and directed by Matt Ross, clearly defines another fear - raising children as rugged individualists! Going directly against today's consensus of American capitalist thinking, this film proposes many hypothetical scenarios: What if today's American family were to retreat into the wilderness, where survival training - physically, emotionally and mentally - was taught and exercised by parents daily? And then they were accepted into Harvard, Yale, MIT? Instead of celebrating Christmas, celebrate "Noam Chomsky Day?" What if iPads and computers were replaced at the early age of 8 by a hunter's gutting knife, a stack of books, a rope, and a cliff? What if instead of going on a shopping spree in a mall, they were exposed to unpredictable nature and all its awesome frightening phenomenon? What if that same family was then forced to return to modern society? Rather than spoil your experience here, go see it for yourself. Discover your own answers to these thought provoking "what ifs". What if you took the challenge to see this movie with your entire family, in order to discuss your values around the dinner table - without iPads and multiple screens to distract you from each other? There are many beautiful eye-opening moments in this family film that centers around the funeral of one of its central members. Going against the American consensus of how we bury our dead, Ben (Viggo Mortensen) and Leslie (Trin Miller), have agreed on a much different scenario, backed by legally binding wills. But this family structure is not without its rebels. Eldest son, Bo (George MacKay), who opens the film with an initiation into manhood that will leave you breathless, does not want to be a "freak" in the eyes of his peers in the "outside world." Two daughters, Kielyr (Samantha Isler) and Vespyr (Annalise Basso) want to explore Nabokov's novel "Lolita" and how grotesquely pure the love is of an older man for a young girl. The youngest six year old, wearing a badger skin hat, struggles with what he sees in the book "Joy Of Sex." Another son Rellian (Nicholas Hamilton) rebels against the "insensitivities" of his father, and carries out a painful revenge. Nevertheless, this family hangs together, even when they are rounded up by the antagonist, Grandpa Jack (Frank Langella) onto his rich suburban estate. You might have seen actor Matt Ross as Gavin Belson in the TV comedy series, "Silicone Valley." His directorial debut joins other off-the-grid films like Sean Penn's "Into the Wild" or Taika Waititi's "Hunt for the Wilderpeople," where the challenge of the “civilized world" is always pulling us back from the "wild." This film cuts even deeper into that divide. In the final scene the soundtrack drops out and we sit at the breakfast table with each of the children preparing for school. Ben is finally at peace with his inner conflict: withdrawing from the world in order to teach his children the best way to live in the world. 20 Terry Street, Suite 121, Patchogue, NY 11772 * Web: plazamac.org * Phone: (631) 438-0083.