Starring George McKay as Bo (Pride, 1917) and Viggo Mortensen (Lord of the Rings, Hidalgo) as Ben, Captain Fantastic is not a superhero movie. From a child’s perspective, yes, but after coming of age the image shatters. It’s mainly about Ben, an extremely human father, more human than most fathers you’d come across in “the real world” that the film likes to position this family outside of. While the family, consisting of Ben and his homeschooled kids, try to navigate around a hostile and brainwashed America, as they believe they are the ones living in the real world, which I am inclined to agree.
I was initially intrigued by the plot of the movie as I was homeschooled and haven’t seen many films which cover the subject, especially when it comes to standing up to authority. My education looked nothing like theirs by the way. Although my mum did go through a phase of wanting to give me a unique name, I was spared, mainly thanks to my grandfather.
The predominant tone of this movie was masculine. There is a real absence of a mother figure in this movie, it interests me to see a reversal, as I grew up without a father figure in my life. Women aren't really heard or listened to in this movie, aside from wishing to honour a questionable set of final wishes that were probably written during an episode. I would say her main wish that comes to Ben in a vision, is for him to look after their children, which he's pretty bad at. The first scene foreshadows the death of the mother figure and this is meant to represent Bo's rite of passage into manhood. Her absence is felt throughout the narrative, the story weaves around her. It has echoes of Bambi. The movie cuts straight to the point and this is the goriest part but not the most challenging to watch. It quickly places this family not living their lives in nature, but as a part of it.
The lifecycle theme carries on throughout the film and I start to have problems with certain aspects. There are red flags everywhere, as Ben coldly delivers to the children the news that their mother, Leslie, "finally did it" (committed suicide), without any fatherly warmth or remorse, it feels like cruelty. Out of nowhere Rellian pulls a knife on his father, then in an effort to correct himself, instead takes out his anger on a bed frame one of his siblings is sitting in, screaming in frustration at how he hates his mother. Yes, there is no right way to grieve and yes, anger is a natural response to suicide. It is one of the dark emotions, that shouldn’t be repressed. But it made me worry how he might treat women in the future, if this is how he reacts to his mother’s death. He’s full of anger and hasn’t been shown or given permission to express his grief in a healthy way. If I grew up around knives, I'm not sure how much I'd trust any of my siblings. There is something not very hippy dippy about this, it's more primal.
Dad’s character is full of flaws, he is stubborn, controlling, reckless and disrespectful of others beliefs, an arrogant man. He won't restrain his children, he encourages discussion and lets them make mistakes, being kind to be cruel, all approaches that I admire in parenthood. Yet, he won’t let his children grieve for their mother in a natural way, instead pushing them to their limits physically and forcing them to bury their pain for it only to resurface later on.
The physical injuries suffered by Rellian as a result of Ben's carelessness, caught the attention of Leslie's father, Jack, who warns Ben he is subjecting him to child abuse. He brings up many valid points, such as Ben's almost compulsive lying, which looks ugly against his other habit of being super honest. Granddad isn't afraid to interfere, to call the authorities. The threat of being reported is a worry I had to grow up with in the back of my mind, even when there was nothing wrong. So I know how it feels to be on the receiving end, afraid of losing your last parent. Whereas I was quite isolated and powerless as an only child, this band of siblings collectively overpower their father more than once. Power to the people!
Death, learning to grieve, which often starts before someone dies, especially when Leslie had been hospitalised for three months, is a vital part of life, that any parent would struggle to teach their children. As we see in their aunt and uncle who lie to their cousins about how their aunt died, stuttering and stumbling over words that make less and less sense the harder they try to not explain what really happened, we see honesty is a far more respectful way to explain death when used with tact. I agree with Ben, in the sense that keeping children in the dark when it comes to death will hurt them more in the long run, whatever good intentions you have.
At another point in their journey, Ben misses an opportunity to explain sex in non heteronormative terms to his children, giving an uncharacteristically conventional, textbook explanation of what sex is: penis and vagina sex, which contradicts so much of what this movie is trying to fight against. But then at the family table he is ready to practice the French culture around the US taboo of children drinking. To my knowledge, the French do not define sex in such simplistic terms.
I start to wonder where this movie’s agenda lies. But what should I expect from a middle ages, American straight white man, even as he celebrates Noam Chomsky’s birthday like a national holiday and lives in such a radical way, dragging his children in tow. But maybe this is not so much a flaw in the character himself and more the writing of the character.
There is a high possibility his children could grow up queer, considering they are taught to critique and question everything, they are exposed to so much literature and have had a “hippy” upbringing otherwise. So why not introduce them to queering the narrative, it’s never too early to start, just like self defence, hunting and politics. So why not even mention sex and gender? Again, it's a very awkward explanation, it's not hippy dippy, free loving at all.
I’m not sure he practices what he preaches as well as he could. Maybe instead of teaching his children to kill deer and sheep, he should’ve taken them to visit their mum in hospital, although her demise wasn’t a linear process. I felt very emotional early on. I lost my gran at 17, she’d been in a coma for three months yet when she died it still felt sudden. I was powerless in that situation, in my second year of college.
Much like the children at the start, I wasn’t allowed to visit her in hospital. I had very little closure and time to process what was happening before she died as I was so removed from the process, having just started college, when normally I had all the time in the world for her, I have to learn to live with not physically giving her my time in her last moments. 28 minutes in and Ben has already disappointed me. But then he turns it all around in a matter of seconds and suddenly I’m cheering like those little kids. But it’s only an hour 10 mins into the movie before they grieve as a family, less of a case of being given a space and more like a car crash.
Their mother has died, they are homeschooled. They practice Buddhism. I enjoyed the crack about making fun of Christians, the Christian homeschooler being the ultimate American stereotype of what homeschooled children are. Especially when the joke is put into practice.
Again, he fails to call out his children on fatfobia and in fact seems to encourage it with comments about spread legs and big pharma. They are very limited by their father's viewpoints and this is something I struggled with, growing up with my mum, who held steadfast beliefs. There’s a lot to unpack with this movie. While I respect hunting more than buying vacuum packed meat from the shelf, it’s natural for a child to be distressed from killing things and he should have responded to this more.
I do wonder how much this movie helps broaden people’s idea of homeschooling or if it further entrenches already existing stereotypes. Bo comes away ashamed of his upbringing, saying he feels like a freak and feels he doesn't know anything unless it comes out of a book. I had similar outbursts just before I started college, which were mainly insecurities that came after humiliation, from socialising with peers. I've never seen that need to breakaway so clearly expressed on screen before, no bratty behaviour, no tantrum, just clear communication. It resonated, it was painful to watch, but also it was strangely cathartic.
While there's a lot of truth in what he says, he is a seeker, extremely adaptive and won't have any problems as long as his thirst to experience learning, love and culture is met. He will fit into college, so long as he finds his "tribe". He has everything to gain and nothing to lose. Once he gets what he wants, he will come to love and appreciate himself and his father again. The movie in the last five minutes seems to abandon its way of life, by rejecting homeschooling completely it seems to perpetuate that homeschooling was the problem, not their parent's approach to it.
When this final scene appeared, my main question was, throughout the film in fact, how often do we see the children have any say over their future, how often are they listened to? They are schooled at home, then suddenly not one, but all are being dumped on the school bus. Why now? How does school solve their problems? How is that sticking it to the man? How is that autonomous decision making? School is not for deviants. School roots out deviants and its main concern lies with instilling obedience.
Only Bo wanted to go to college, at no point did the children express a want or longing to go to school. And why would they? Their days are structured, full of routine, rhythm, discipline. Their father makes all the time in the world for them, once upon a time, so did mum. This seemed like lazy writing. Even if Rellian wanted to go, it’s perfectly possible for some of the children to attend school and some of them to not, or go when they feel ready. Choice is important when it comes to education. As a homeschooler, I started out in education, left when it wasn’t for me and went back when I was ready.
Their problems won’t disappear by going to school, there will be those Avril Lavigne type girls and sly cousins tenfold, a whole building full of them. I have first hand experience of these situations, only hearing glimpses of mainstream music when played in shops, periods with little to no TV, not being exposed to some (not all) recent pop culture and having to bumble along in conversation, lack of interest or knowledge in brands, being teased for nerdiness in certain subjects yet still coming away feeling stupid, individuality and “weirdness”.
That’s a problem of inclusivity. Universities accept people from a range of backgrounds, I am speaking not only in terms of entry requirements but also culturally. School children on the whole don’t know how and aren’t encouraged to include outsiders into their conversations, they instead make fun of them, outcasting them, as adults do. Children often talk with their parents voices, mimicking their prejudice. Difference will be magnified by their environment every day. And this family don’t obey authority. All they’ll do is rebel harder. They don’t have the soft skills to survive school for five minutes.
It’s sending the message of “you were right, we were wrong, we are freaks, we’re going to fix ourselves and be like you and everyone else.” to be happy? To be left alone? They bowed down! Even after quoting in the amazing Noam Chomsky, who said:
“If you assume that there is no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, that there are opportunities to change things, then there is a possibility that you can contribute to making a better world.”
I would say of the ideals this movie pushes, I agree with 90% of them. Telling the truth, family time, mindfulness, self sufficiency and yes even shoplifting from big business. I’m from the UK and even the Pope condones this when those who steal are in greater need. And who isn’t, when corporations are greedy as they are and the costs of living rise every day and have no intention of stopping until the model collapses.
The ending cancels out so much of what the family did right, raising such strong, eloquent, wise, well rounded children. Its conclusion fails to inspire as it could have, a failed empirical experiment. And I suppose that’s valid, because homeschooling won’t work for everyone and even if it did it couldn’t work forever or remain the right decision forever.
And maybe that's the conclusion we should draw. After all, two of the children almost died. That in itself is a conundrum of its own. Vespyr on one hand would have never survived the fall without her father, while on the other hand wouldn't have been climbing the roof in the first place to retrieve her mother from her parents, if it wasn't for her father. Going by what we hear, Leslie was beginning to have doubts about how they were living their lives. Perhaps the messaging could have been clearer, that this was Ben's way of really honouring Leslie's real dying wish, providing her children a stable, predictable upbringing - albeit in a Tom and Barbara Good sort of way, if they'd ever had children in the series.
There are so many ways to have a balanced homeschooling experience. With some modification, these kids could have continued their home education while abandoning certain distressing aspects of their lives. There’s child lead unschooling, home education, hack-schooling. They could have had a TV, lived in a house (as they do), stopped hunting, had a less strict diet... But abandon the concept of education outside the school system entirely?
Currently Captain Fantastic is free on BBC iPlayer - Captain Fantastic
Comments