#Captain fantastic movie

(He keeps the kids in shape by chasing them up mountains, rounding out the day with extreme rock climbing.) Many of Ross’s best scenes come after Ben shares the news about Leslie’s death and he visualizes their strife by cutting rapidly from their sweat-soaked faces to their shaking bodies. Combined with Ross’s sense for the actors’ physicalities, Ben’s PE classes pack an especially visceral punch.

Matt Ross, who joined the mixed bag of actors-turned-directors in 2012 with 28 Hotel Rooms, has a great command over use of space. In honoring her last will and testament-to be cremated and flushed down a public toilet-Ben allows his kids, his “philosopher kings,” to roam among the sheeple while he must try real hard to be the shepherd. After learning of the bougie funeral Leslie’s father (an underused Frank Langella) is planning for her, the Cash cab heads for the city on a rescue mission to spare her the inhumanity of being laid to rest in a country club golf course. But the tragic development regarding Leslie compels Ben to bring his kids into the world he’s warned them about their whole lives. They hunt deer by day and read Guns, Germs and Steel by night.

#Captain fantastic movie

Viggo’s 100% Natural Good-Time Swiss Family Robinson Solution.īy the time Ben gets some devastating news about his wife, who only appears in the movie in flashbacks, he had already been raising (“training”) the kids by himself for a while. Great performances, especially from Mortensen and George MacKay as eldest son Bo, keep it afloat for well into the second act-until capsizing from a blistering acoustic cover of “Sweet Child O’ Mine” by the Cash family band, aka Dr. Despite mounting wrong turns, it marches forward without evolving its message or its characters. Shepard Fairey even designed the promotional Father’s Day poster.Īnd, like the Brothers Bern, Captain Fantastic winds up falling to bullheaded egoism. The kids’ names are Bodevan, Kielyr, Vespyr, Rellian, Zaja and Nai, obviously. When Ben’s sister (Kathryn Hahn) urges him to put the kids in a “normal school,” he has his 9-year-old daughter demonstrate her civic knowledge by babysplaining the Citizens United v FEC decision). But barring a few particulars, Captain Fantastic is the incarnation of a Bernie base consciousness.

And they don’t take a VW, they take a school bus. Bernie Bro: The Movie is here.Īll right, so it isn’t #BernieOrBust that makes Ben and Leslie decide to live as forest people-they do it for the more abstract purpose of protecting their kids from the ills of modern society. A man who has his family has all the riches in the world, you see. There they’ll live off the land and emancipate themselves from mental slavery. So when Hillary tightens her stranglehold on the media and buries Bernie under superdelegates, Ben thinks to himself, “Time to stick it to the man.” Realizing that America might never wake up, he and his wife Leslie (Trinn Miller) pack the kids onto their VW bus and move to the forests of the Pacific Northwest. Viggo Mortensen flexes his dad muscles once again in Captain Fantastic, this time as rogue philosopher and father of six, Ben Cash, a man tired of contributing to a corrupt system where politicians are puppets for interest groups and moral values are traded for stock options.