30 July 2016

Captain Fantastic, a review


One of the first pieces of pop culture I consumed after a two-week fast in Kenya this summer was the trailer for the recently-released film Captain Fantastic. Right away it looked like something right up my alley: a homeschool family with a passion for nature and a desire to not be sucked into the entertainment-obsessed, intellectually flaccid, consumeristic excess of contemporary America. If everything after that colon sounds self-righteous, you're not wrong, but I look around at the way so many children are being raised in our culture and it strikes me as inhuman, hollow, even depraved. I know I'm not perfect and I imagine I will find unique ways to screw my kids up, but I don't want any help from a media system and education system that seem designed to stultify thought and snuff out any allegiance to tradition and beauty. 

Anyway, on to the film. I'll summarize very briefly: the film opens on a family of six children being home-educated by their father, played brilliantly by Viggo Mortensen, in the wilds of the Pacific Northwest. The children's mother, never shown except in dreams, has committed herself to psychiatric treatment in New Mexico and kills herself (this is in the first act of the film and hardly counts as a spoiler as it sets the film in motion). The deceased's parents, appalled by the lifestyle embraced by their daughter's family and blaming her emotional issues on the dogmatism of her husband, banish them from attending the funeral. At the behest of his children and his own desire to honor his wife, the family packs up an outfitted school bus and heads south. Adventures and lessons ensue as the kids "impractical" training comes up against the realities of the "real world." If you want to know more, go see the movie.


Upon reflection I am still not entirely sure what I think about this film. There are moments of deep resonance for me: the father banishing the use of the adjective "interesting" as a non-word in describing literature. When his daughter then offers plot summary he presses her to go further into analysis. It seemed almost designed to warm my heart, as did the first night we see the children reading books around a campfire: a pre-teen reading The Brothers Karamazov, an eight-year-old reading Middlemarch. I want to scream to the world that this is possible. If we dumb things down for children they will go along with it and play dumb; if we call them to a higher standard they will rise to meet it. I enjoyed the impassioned oversight and planned formation combined with little hand-holding and independence. The kids are on a plan, but they are not guided through every step. Every minor wound is not fawned over and they are allowed to cry and grieve and get angry and yell as the situation warrants. I love that they saw the systems of our culture as poisonous in just the same ways I do and sought to avoid the corrupting nature of technology and entertainment.


But my appreciation of the film is not quite what I expected as I felt my soul stir in watching that trailer upon my return from Africa. My wife and I went to see the film at the Esquire Theatre on 6th avenue. We got there early and walked around the neighborhood chatting. At one point we made predictions for the movie; my main prediction was that, in order not to alienate their audience base, the film would go out of its way to distance the family portrayed from any semblance of religious conviction. There would be no Bible memorization scene, in other words, but I imagined a scene with someone quoting Nietzsche. I was wrong, but only slightly. They did not quote Nietzsche, they quoted Noam Chomsky. 


One of the main scenes played for laughs is when the family bus has been pulled over by a cop suspicious by the presence of six school-age children chilling in a bus on a school day. Rather than explain that, you know, we're homeschooled and this is America so chill, the kids all pretend to be religious fanatics, even holding hands and singing a hymn. The mortified cop exits the bus and the family is on its way.


I get it. Dumb, knuckle-dragging Christian homeschoolers. Haha! Not us. We're doing this to stick it to the man, man. But it felt forced and over the top. And it made--and maybe this was the intention?--Mortensen's character in particular look like a smug asshole. At one point the kids remind each other they are not to make fun of anyone. They all nod in agreement until one of the younger children reminds them of the caveat to the prohibition: "Except for Christians." Knee-slapping stuff, that. 


I don't think my main problem here is that the film takes shots at Christians. I am inured to that, mostly, at this point. I think the thing that frustrates me is that these people think they are better than Christians because they don't worship fairy tales. But, instead, they worship Noam F*cking Chomsky. They are members of an organized religion and they are worshipers. They just don't like what some other people worship. But is celebrating Christmas any less ridiculous than celebrating--and I am not making this up--Noam Chomsky Day on his birthday?


I think, in other words, that the family portrayed in this film has correctly diagnosed the ills besetting our culture but chosen the wrong cure. There is some virtue in opting out of the excess of our late modern age, but if it is filled with some equally vapid philosophy then what, really, is the point? I think this showed in the way the film was filmed as well. This was not a contemplative film; there were no questions being asked here. The lesson learned was simplistic and the compromise position adopted at the end made so many previous efforts nearly meaningless. The film took no time to pause, to consider the implications of the characters' lives, to help us find the beauty in the mundane, the everyday. Everyone they met was stupid or fat or stupid and fat. The kids were made judgmental and self-righteous by their withdrawal; they did not withdraw for the life and beauty of this world. 


This is the risk everyone runs by withdrawing; it is one I am certainly conscious of as we move into the homeschooling phase. But the end in mind for me is clear: I am removing my children from the world (for a time) for the good of the world, so that when they enter it their lives are governed by truth and beauty and goodness, so that in their efforts to glorify their savior and seek his kingdom they left up the one who gathers all people unto himself.

No comments:

Post a Comment