Films > Film Reviews

Captain Fantastic

05/09/16

Watch the trailer, take in the poster: at first glance the most you’d expect from Captain Fantastic is a sub-Wes Anderson, ninety quirky minutes of symmetrical twee, but take the time to watch this through. For what we’re actually given is a family drama with serious depth, held together by an air-tight script and Viggo Mortensen’s performance as the free thinking back-to-nature dad. 

A couple decides to raise their six children in the forests of north-west America, a chance to educate them away from the greed and stupidity of modern life. The mother is admitted to hospital for severe bipolar and the film begins with the news of her suicide; the family must now travel to her funeral. Its philosophy is fairly utopian: an isolated humanist commune in which the development of both body and mind is paramount and Noam Chomsky Day is celebrated in place of Christmas. It’s an intellectual paradise where no strand of knowledge is prohibited – if the youngest asks Ben (the father, played by Viggo) what intercourse and rape are, then Ben provides clear definitions. ‘You disagree,’ is always his answer, ‘so let’s have a discourse about it.’ But while these kids get to live in the forest and read Dostoyevsky as they eat the stag they’ve just hunted, they are so far removed from society that when they’re forced to enter it they can barely function. Bo (George Mackay) has secretly been applying to – and getting accepted by – all the best colleges in the country, but a single kiss from a girl and he proposes marriage in front of her mother.

Captain Fantastic is really good. Its depth comes in Ben’s choice to raise them in such a way – and while this would do fine for a surface-level comedy, the ethical implications of this choice are the heart of the film. Are the children’s futures being destroyed? How long can this idyll last? This kind of hermetic existence can be disastrous, and brings to mind films like Into the Wild, where one man’s desire to get as far away from modern life as possible eventually gets him killed. More recently the English countryside refuge of How I Live Now can only shield the characters from impending war for a short amount of time. The children’s 'lost boys' upbringing is examined not just by concerned grandparents but by the children themselves. Captain Fantastic is a parade of excitement and repentance and grief, of very funny, stick-it-to-the-man anti-capitalist goodness. And with a soundtrack full of Alex Somers and Bikini Kill it’s sure to be some sort of cult classic one day.

8/10