Captain Fantastic (2016) – Matt Ross (Friday’s Finest)

Posted on May 17, 2024 by observationblogger — 1 Comment

Nai: [from the back seat] What does rape mean?

Ben: When a person, usually a man, forces another person, usually a woman, to have sexual intercourse.

Nai: Oh.

Ben: Who’s hungry?

Kids: Me! Me!

Nai: What’s sexual intercourse?

Ben: When a man sticks his penis in a woman’s vagina… Everyone keep their eyes peeled for deer.

Nai: Why would a man stick his penis in a woman’s vagina?

Ben: Because it can give them both pleasure. And because the combination of a man’s sperm and a woman’s egg can create a baby and continue the human race.

Nai: But that’s where she pees.

Ben: Pee comes not from the vagina, but from the urethra, which is within the outer labia. But generally speaking, yes, that is where she pees… Everyone keep your eyes open for game of any kind.

IMDB Storyline:
In the forests of the Pacific Northwest, a father devoted to raising his six kids with a rigorous physical and intellectual education is forced to leave his paradise and enter the world, challenging his idea of what it means to be a parent.

In similar modus operandi to the irrepressible Little Miss Sunshine, Captain Fantastic isn’t ashamed to take it’s audience out of their comfort zone (to a remote forest to be exact) and travel down roads less taken. As is evident from the conversation above between Ben and his very young daughter Nai, this movie doesn’t shy away from confronting sensitive topics like ‘Sex, Politics and Religion’ head-on. In the eyes of this reviewer, do I myself espouse to the Noam Chomsky-esque – anarcho-syndicalist, libertarian socialist and Green revolution world views that Ben imparts onto his children? No, not exactly, but it depends on who you’re transmitting it too. Consider Naval Ravikat comments about how ethics don’t scale:

‘With my family I’m a communist. With my close friends I’m a socialist. At my state level, I’m a democrat. At national level I’m a Republican and at the federal level I’m a libertarian’.

Mr Ravikat elaborated ‘The larger the group of people you have massed together who have different interests; the less trust there is; the more cheating there is; the better the incentives have to be aligned; the better the system has to work, then the more you go towards Capitalism. The smaller the group you in. You’re in your kibitz, you’re in your commune, you’re in your house, you’re in your tribe, by all means be a socialist…..but when you’re dealing with strangers you want to be a real socialist? Then great, open all your doors tomorrow. Please come everybody and take what you want and see how that works.’

Furthermore, there are aspects to Ben’s philosophy and mode of parenting I feel are sorely lacking in today’s rationalist – materialist world. Below is a list of what I consider his ‘positive’ parenting facets:

Ben leads by example and takes his role as ‘parent’ extremely seriously,
Ben treats his children with transparency and dignity as he himself would want to be treated,
Ben teaches them how to take responsibility and deal with overcoming adversity in the most dire of circumstances,
Ben develops their natural curiosity to learn, and to love ‘reading’, and
Ben imparts on them the perils of succumbing to a modern consumer mindset and being reliant on corporate stakeholdership.

Is Captain Fantastic without it’s flaws and do the events feel entirely credible and realistic? Does it make my 100 Favourite Movies list? Heck, no. But, it has its moments in the sun which deserve high praise because it represents my ineffable adoration of the ‘original’ movie: A movie that feels like no other movie I have seen. Give me more of that as an audience member in lieu of the modern big swell blockbuster reboots and ‘woke’ captured Star Wars franchises. So, please, pretty please… with sugar on top and for the love of god, give me more like Captain Fantastic, A Separation, Little Miss Sunshine, Paris Texas, Candy, Barton Fink, Another Earth, Being John Malkovich, Billy Elliot, Chasing Amy, Ex Maquina, Half Nelson, I Origins, Mr. Turner, Mulholland Drive, Naked, Once Were Warriors, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Roma, Running on Empty, The Royal Tenenbaums, Take Shelter, The Father, Tár, The Hunt, The Wrestler, This is Spinal Tap, Waterland, The Secret in their Eyes, and Wild Tales.

Interesting IMDB Trivia of Captain Fantastic:

George MacKay practiced yoga 3-4 hours a day once he was cast as Bo so he could do the advanced poses he did in the film. He said it was the toughest part of the shoot for him.
The actors went on a two-day survival trip and slept together as a family in a hut they built made of ferns. They learned how to track and start a fire with a bow drill, read a lot, and learned about the world’s political systems.
Matt Ross said a team member contacted Noam Chomsky to clear his quotes for use in the film. “The way he responded was indicative of the human being that he is, no lawyers, just ‘please quote me correctly.'”
Director Matt Ross had the actors who played the six fictional Cash children in CAPTAIN FANTASTIC sign a contract promising not to bring any electronic devices on set and to “keep processed foods and sugars to a minimum.”
One of the baby pictures taped to the school bus walls is of Viggo Mortensen’s own son, Henry.
Viggo Mortensen’s red-patterned shirt that he’s wearing in the funeral scene of Captain Fantastic is the same shirt he wore in the 1992 movie Indian Runner, of which snippets were used in the Bruce Springsteen music video for the song “Highway Patrolman” (1982). In the video, Mortensen plays the bad-luck, no-good brother of the highway patrolman.

References:
1: Captain Fantastic (film) – Wikipedia
2. Captain Fantastic (2016) – IMDB