The family in Captain Fantastic is raging peacefully against the machine, living deliberately in the woods of the Pacific Northwest. Far from the insidious lure of Twitter, Starbucks, and the other comforting detritus of late capitalism, Ben is free to raise his six children in something resembling an anti-establishment boot camp. There are daily readings of classic literature, rigorous physical exercise, and, instead of anything so bourgeois as Christmas, there is Noam Chomsky Day. (The professor would likely be alarmed by some of Ben’s authoritarian tendencies.)
The film itself is not quite as radical as this anarchist Swiss Family Robinson, squandering its most intriguing ideas and a masterful Viggo Mortensen performance as it devolves into another cloyingly sentimental drama about quirky kids and their dysfunctional but well-intentioned elders.
Mortensen brings the stern tenderness of a caring father and the quiet fury of a disillusioned activist to Ben, the bearded patriarch whose happy commune is disrupted by some heartbreaking news he receives during a rare trip to town. He tells his children in the same pull-no-punches manner he deploys for impromptu sex ed lessons and mountain climbing instructions: Their mother has killed herself. A co-planner of the family’s unconventional lifestyle, she had gone back on the grid to be treated at a clinic for severe depression.
This requires a family road trip to ensure their mother is put to rest according to the wishes of her Buddhist philosophy. Her old-fashioned father, undoubtedly a member of Nixon’s silent majority, is not keen on the idea of his hippie son-in-law ruining a more traditional funeral. Along the way to the inevitable standoff in the church, there are culture clashes galore, at rest stops and suburban dinner tables, as well as one memorable shoplifting excursion at a grocery store.
Captain Fantastic is mostly sympathetic to its lead character and his parenting, often to its detriment. The film revels in a condescending scene that contrasts Ben’s children, who can expound on the themes of Lolita and speak to the importance of the Bill of Rights, with two teenaged knuckleheads whose minds have been rotted by video games and the U.S. public school system.
But there are drawbacks to Ben’s uncompromising view of the world. There is dissension in the ranks. The eldest son has been secretly applying, and receiving acceptance letters, to Ivy League schools. A younger child is even closer to open revolt because of the whole holidays-for-public-intellectuals thing.
Writer-director Matt Ross (Gavin Belson on HBO’s Silicon Valley) seems to know that this morass of contradictions, between Ben’s admirable principles and the practical pitfalls of such societal isolation, should be the movie’s most compelling feature. But he approaches the subject awkwardly and from a distance, as if scared to alienate audiences. Ultimately, Ross takes the easy way out, settling for trite, sweet solutions over a more challenging and ambiguous reckoning.
The film’s politics are too safe to ruffle any feathers. Ben’s son may be a Maoist, but the family’s frequent espousal of “leftist” cliches — “stick it to The Man” is said with great gravity — is more likely to induce eye-rolling than revolutionary fervor. A rendition of “Sweet Child O’Mine” (has Ross not seen Step Brothers?) should cause a similar reaction.
For all its progressive lip service, the film is inherently conservative, hewing to a tired formula of dramedies about offbeat families trying to make it in America.
Captain Fantastic is pleasant enough for some truly wonderful acting and its amiable road movie flow, but anyone in search of a more moving commentary on the American family and how to best raise the country’s youth would be better off watching Chomsky videos on YouTube.
