When I was a boy, I saw a film
that captured my imagination for a long time afterwards. My Side of the Mountain was an innocent film
about a boy that leaves his family and goes out into the woods to live a
solitary life and live off the land in Canada.
He meets up with a vagabond that helps him survive the harsh Canadian
winter, and the boy eventually returns to his worried parents but not before an
unrealistic adventure about what survivalist life would be like for a 10 year
old. Critics said the film departed from
the novel, was cheesy and unrealistic, but the scenery was great and it
introduced us to the simultaneous conflicts between the desire to live in the state
of nature, coupled with a child’s natural pull to separate from his or her
parents.
Fast forward nearly 50 years and
director Debra Granik (Winters Bone) tackles the same themes in a much more
sophisticated and updated way in Leave No Trace. Ben Foster plays a PTSD afflicted man who
lives on public lands in Oregon with his 13 year old daughter, Tom, played by
Thomasin McKenzie. The two live deep in
the woods in a primitive lean-to shelter, living off the land, gathering
mushrooms and collecting rainwater.
Will teaches his daughter survival skills and home schools her so that
she is academically proficient as well.
The two live a life separate and
apart from civilized society. They
forage for food, collect rainwater, and entertain themselves with chess and
books. Like Thoreau, their cleavage from
modern society is not complete. They
occasionally go into town (Portland) for some necessities funded by Will’s
small time trade in black market drugs.
Will wants as little to do with civilization as he can get away with,
presumably because civilization has cut him a raw deal for his service. The film does not tell us how long they have
been living like this, only that Will lost his wife some time ago as Tom has no
memory of her.
McKenzie plays the pre-adolescent
girl superbly. At some times we see an
obedient daughter, wholly devoted to her dad.
At others, we see flashes of a very capable, smart, deeply thinking and
very disciplined young woman. Her single
instance of a breakdown in discipline leads to the discovery of the pair by the
authorities and they are taken into custody by the local authorities for
illegally living on public land.
After being forcibly removed from
the forest, the civilized world is actually kind to them. The social welfare and private charity system
spring into action, find them temporary housing and find Will a job. But Will struggles to adapt to civil
society. He can neither cope with the
government bureaucracy (he cannot finish the psychological test administered to
him) and chafes at working for someone else.
The announcement by the business owner that “this is how I make my
money” sets the independent Will’s teeth on edge. Tom cannot find it within himself to be
subservient either to the State bureaucracy or to to a business owner. Tom, on the other hand, wants to adapt to
society and in a telling scene at the child welfare agency, her interaction
with two other girls there tells us that she wants to fit in. The divergence between father and daughter
is the central drama in this wonderful film.
Good films reflect the tensions
of the society in which they find themselves.
Leave No Trace is a quintessential American film. As I discussed in my blog post last week,
Laura Ingalls Wilder is an iconic figure, a true pioneer woman that was
resilient enough to live much of her life very independently and even rejected
social security payments from the government.
It’s no accident that we see the same themes here in this film. Will rejects not only the government
bureaucracy and charity, but struggles even to become part of the capitalist
structure. The struggle for
independence has been a basic tension and struggle since Thoreau and Wilder’s
childhoods. Today, we see this being
played out today in an intensifying way in our politics. One of the basic struggles is between
citizens that wish to have an expansive cradle-to-grave role for government in
our lives (see Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) and those of us
that wish to push government away and severely limit it, even at the risk of
exposing us to a harsh and unforgiving environment.
Leave No Trace is the must see
film of the summer, especially for those of us with a libertarian bend. It will leave a trace of things to think
about.
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