Captain Fantastic

Year: 2016
Type: Drama
Directed: Matt Ross
Stars: Viggo Mortensen, George MacKay, Samantha Isler, Annalise Basso, Nicholas Hamilton, Shree Crooks, Charlie Shotwell, Trin Miller, Kathryn Hahn, Steve Zahn, Frank Langella, Erin Moriarty, Missi Pyle
Production: Electric City Entertainment

Late in the film, our protagonist Ben (Mortensen) grief stricken and woebegone, reads a letter from his belated wife Leslie (Miller). By this revelation we're at the lowest point of the hero's journey; the point something inside Ben is supposed to ignite, something is supposed to change, something is supposed to happen. "We are raising philosopher kings out here," she writes in a moment of clarity. A few scenes later he sulks further; hanging his regret and loss in a Jesse Jackson '88 t-shirt.

Years before this moment, Ben, his wife, and his half-dozen kids found paradise in the rural isolation of the Pacific Northwest. They live as subsistence hunter/gatherers and keep a tight ship training their bodies and minds with intense physical exercise and fireside reading. When we first meet their oldest Bodevan (MacKay) he's covered head-to-toe in mud and just stalked and killed his first deer. Their youngest son Rellian (Hamilton) can understand theoretical physics and their eldest daughter Kielyr (Isler) can analyze the themes of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. Yet despite their accomplishments, they've rarely ventured outside their insulated existence and are growing concerned over their mother's absence. Leslie dies in a mental hospital in New Mexico, forcing the rest of the family to take a cross-country road trip to say their goodbyes. What's worse, the in-laws are threatening legal action if Ben shows his face at the funeral.

Captain Fantastic is supposed to be about grief and largely succeeds in creating moments of genuine pathos and honesty. Viggo Mortensen's natural charisma lends itself to a never-ending sea of emotion while still holding to the stoic gruffness that the character requires. The illusion is topped by a somber but good-natured rictus, a Walt Whitman-esque beard and a life's philosophy of "action not words." The children fair just as well, playing their one-note like their little hearts depended on it with Hamilton being the standout as the familial Judas whose grief has taken a self-destructive dimension.

Yet the film doesn't get passed second gear largely due to it's sanctimonious utopian proselytizing. The film spends and awful lot of time humanizing Ben and his "alternative" lifestyle to the detriment of any respectful and authentic ruminations on death and grief the film is trying to highlight. The children helpfully parrot his thoughts on proto-fascistic-capitalism, Maoist-Trotskyist dialectic, Noam Chomsky, beret-wearing, cigarette puffing existentialism etc., making their little commune seem like a harmless byproduct of their quirk. Outsiders such as Ben's sister-in-law (Hahn) and grandpa Jack (Langella) look like intolerant a**holes by comparison because they don't let their kids have wine at dinner and are agog that their nephews and nieces don't know what a pair of Nike's is.

Heard this guy had some great calisthenics!

Liberals will likely be consumed and delighted by Captain Fantastic's positive feedback loop of self-reliant leftism; as if Ben's land of milk and honey could be the reality of only we had a Bernie Sanders presidency and we all "stuck it to the man." Yet I ask, would a film like this be as readily accepted if it were a gaggle of fundamentalist Christians? How about a Warren Jeffs-type cult? Take away the pseudo-Partridge Family, father-knows-best noise and replace Frank Langella's disapproving mug with the Federal Government and you got yourself an ultra-left version of Waco.

Thankfully I think director Matt Ross knows this and tempers Ben's absolutism with a dollop of compromise by the time the film reaches its final coda. Additionally the thematic crux of the film does reach a conclusion, the satisfaction of which is sure to divide some audiences. Bolstered by great acting across the board, Captain Fantastic could have lived up to its comparisons to Little Miss Sunshine (2006) but settles with being a neo-hippie version of Swiss Family Robinson (1960).

Final Grade: C