Captain Fantastic

If I had to summarize my reaction to Captain Fantastic in one word, it would be ugh.

Here is a film that wants to be both an examination of a deeply involved father, some kind of satire about going off the grid, an emotional family drama, and just an all-around uncomfortable mixture of quirk and emotional honesty. There’s a few things I liked about Captain Fantastic, but not enough of them to recommend it.

It seems like every year another one of these quirk-fest family dramedies makes its way into the Oscar race, but this has to be the nadir of that recent trend. At least it only made it into the Best Actor race for Viggo Mortensen’s wonderfully complex and quiet work. I’m not sure how I feel about this being his second nomination in favor of better work in films like A History of Violence or A Dangerous Method, but here we are in the wild world of Oscar politicking.

The main problem with Captain Fantastic is that it sets up its basic premise, then proceeds to do nothing major with it. Why exactly did he and his wife decide to leave it all behind and go live off of the land? What’s the endgame for this family? Did they not think about how important learning to adept, move in, and work within the larger society is a necessary survival skill to have? Was this family just going to eventually inbreed and turn into the long-distant cousins of Deliverance? Well, don’t expect anything resembling coherent interaction with the plot to be found. But there’s a scene where the characters all burn the corpse of their mother on the beach while turning “Sweet Child O’ Mine” into a twee campfire sing-along, so there’s that going for it, I guess?

The other major problem with Captain Fantastic is that it introduces the concept of these kids being forced back into modern society and civilization, and how ill equipped they are to deal with it. The kids rage against their dad and his questionable choices, understandably from my vantage point, but then they turn around and exhibit undying loyalty to him. This film wants to both ways, and doesn’t want either of them at the same time. But hey, Viggo Mortensen goes full-frontal for no reason, and his performance is layered, complex, and better than this shallow, overly long movie deserves. Has broad cartoonish whimsy ever felt so oppressive?