Watched this the other night with the 20-year old. It had been on his list and off-and-on mine, so we decided to go for it.
The concept was certainly more appealing than the execution, in the end, although it definitely wasn’t a wasted two hours, for it did prompt reflection and conversation.
From the poster art and concept you get the idea that this might be a wacky fish-out-of-water story, but it’s really not, and it does take a rather bizarre, and some might say dark turn in the last quarter that’s even more unbelievable than the rest of the film and probably off-putting to most. But perhaps that’s the point.
Anti-capitalist Ben Cash lives in the wilderness with his wife, Leslie, and their six children: Bo, Kielyr, Vespyr, Rellian, Zaja, and Nai, whom they have educated, teaching them how to survive along with high-level homeschooling that includes politics and philosophy. Bo has been accepted to leading universities. Then Leslie is hospitalized for bipolar disorder. When she commits suicide, Ben decides to travel to the funeral with his children to fulfill her will of being cremated, instead of the traditional burial that her father Jack wants for his daughter. Jack threatens to call the police and have Ben arrested if he attends the funeral. Along the journey of Ben and his children, Bo meets teenager Claire and falls in love with her. They spend one troubled night with Ben’s sister Harper, her husband Dave, and cousins Justin and Jackson. When they arrive at the church, Jack and his wife Abigail are surprised to see them. Ben makes a speech disclosing Leslie’s will to the guests, and is expelled from the ceremony. Now Jack wants custody of his grandchildren. What will Ben do?
Great cast, landscapes and directing choices lush, fluid and evocative. Some of it’s catnip for homeschoolers, especially unschooling, with reservations (ahead).
I particularly liked a scene below. I like it because of the railing on the word “interesting” – and then the way Ben pushes his daughter to articulate her analysis.
But here’s a weird thought and takes me to my own reaction to the film. Is Vespyr’s description of Lolita and the ambiguous impact of Nabokov’s style and choices a meta-analysis of Captain Fantastic?
But it’s also kind of a trick, because it’s so wrong. He’s old and he basically rapes her. So it makes me feel…. I hate him and I feel sorry for him. At the same time.
Not that anything like that happens in Captain Fantastic, but what we do have at the center is a father who preaches freedom and anti-authoritarianism, which makes (some of) us feel supportive and even aspirational, but then it becomes clear that he accomplishes his goal by being….authoritarian, limiting freedom and even a sort of brainwashing.
We hate him and feel sorry for him. At the same time.
Elements of it are over the top and the end, as I said, has weird stuff happening that some have even suggested are so odd that they are actually happening only in the father’s head – which is interesting (oops), but I don’t think plausible. For the end – the very end – is clearly intended to encourage us to see the value of both-and rather than either-or.
And if you can dig deeper, it’s a good springboard for thinking and talking about parenting. A commenter at Althouse’s blog put it best, I think:
I’m libertarian-righty, but in a way that included sending my kids to leftish-hippie-ish Waldorf school. And they loved the movie and mocked me for days with comments about celebrating Chomsky’s birthday or living on a bus or killing deer as a rite of passage. I thought the movie did a great job of showing that ultimately a child has to find freedom in getting free of even the person who’s teaching them to be freethinkers. Because the job of parent is a form of indoctrination, but you hope, if you’re good at it and a good person, that it will fail in the end on some levels.
By the way, the film was written and directed by Matt Ross, a favorite actor of mine who played a Mormon polygamist extremist in HBO’s Big Love and Zuckerburg/Jobs/Gates/Musk-type Crazy tech founder Gavin Belson in Silicon Valley – here’s an interview with him about the film.
Charlotte was Both 