While I'm feeling relatively good about the fact that I'm taking travelling seriously and actively partaking in the necessary preparations to get things rolling, I've been wanting to post about a specific film for a couple of weeks now: Captain Fantastic.
Being a fan of Viggo Mortensen, I realised that this 2016 film was one that I had completely missed, and with it being branded as a drama and comedy film, it certainly caught my interest.
Captain Fantastic, however, is a film that I struggle to agree fits the comedy genre, it's a film riddled with heartbreak from the start, and it continues to yank at your emotions throughout -- of course, that's a great thing in cinema, but it's worth noting if you're looking for something more upbeat.
Ben Cash (Viggo Mortensen) is a father that lives isolated from society, raising his children to be more critical thinkers, free, artistic, and aware of the evil capitalist, brain-dead consumer nature of society. With the death of the mother, the family has to venture out of their comfort zones and into the world in order to give her the proper burial she requested; all alongside fighting the strong opinions of outside family.
While the film doesn't have many comedic elements, it certainly can feel wholesome. The sense of adventure the family has for just discovering the world they've grown to hate allows the film's premise to not grow stale, it allows for us to witness the ways in which their isolation has affected their levels of social skills, and that escalates the drama among the family as some begin to realise what they've been missing, and that they don't actually have any true way of understanding and connecting with others.
Ben's love for the outdoor world results in his ignorance to believe that it is his fault, that in reality his attempts to shelter his family and create what's best for them has in a way damaged them, kept them a bit too close and actually limited their true potential. The bigger picture is revealed and shows that Ben has accidentally been the leading cause of all this, and it's unclear as to whether it's what his children want for themselves.
Viggo Mortensen's performance in the film makes for some incredibly dramatic scenes, ones in which you can really feel yourself feeling his sense of loss and loneliness in the world, his pain for hurting his children, and his now deceased wife. His expressions of clear depth, thousand-yard-stare-like emotions as he realises his children are all he has, and he has to let them go can hit like a train.
Captain Fantastic is stylish, beautifully filmed, and focuses so heavily on the acceptance of loss and moving on. It holds a simple narrative, and flourishes in its creativity and strong use of colours in order to show just how these characters stand out from the world. It's an excellent viewing, but only if you're prepared for the sadness that follows.
