SNAPSHOT
A father (Viggo Mortensen), devoted to teaching his six children how to live and survive in the deep forests of the Pacific Northwest, is forced to leave his self-created paradise. When confronted with the real world, he begins a journey that challenges his ideas of freedom and what it means to raise a family. (synopsis via Coming Soon)
It’s tough thing to be your own person in today’s world.
Well probably any period of time really.
Humanity generally doesn’t have a great track record of tolerating those who deviate from accepted norms and want to follow Robert Frost’s oft-referred to road “less traveled by.”
All too aware of this on one level, Ben (Viggo Mortensen) is still surprised when, forced to leave his deep forest idyll after an unexpected tragedy finds himself routinely and almost aggressively misunderstood by pretty much everyone, including his wife’s quite conventional family.
It’s a salutary lesson in the way society seeks to push down those who don’t quite want to march the beat of a consumerist, conformist drum and how hard it can be to fit back into civilisation when your values run counter to everything around you.
In Captain Fantastic, which was one of the hits of Sundance this year, we’re treated to a film, says Variety that “evenhandedly weighing the pros and cons of its wildly unconventional parenting strategy, as the grieving father and his six kids cope with the idea of integrating back into polite society.”
It goes on to say that this is the sort of film that will “connect in a major way with those looking to be swept up and moved by such a fundamental human experience.”
In other words, if you’re a square peg wondering how you’ll ever fit into a round world such as ours, this is the film for you.
Captain Fantastic opens in USA on 8 July 2016; no Australia date yet.
Trailer for Captain Fantastic on TrailerAddict.