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.