Formula:
(Captain Fantastic * Lean on Pete) + Winter's Bone
Leave No Trace is about a father (Foster) and daughter (McKenzie) who
live off the land, deep in a state park in Oregon. It's a meager existence but
they both seem to like it. The father is a veteran of some sort, clearly still
suffering from PTSD. They are eventually
discovered in the park by the police and get set up in a house with a job for
the father. It's clear he's not happy there, and they eventually set off on
another adventure.
This film is beautifully shot and acted. McKenzie is
a big discovery. Maybe not Jennifer Lawrence big, but that's an unfair bar to
set. She plays everything small and confidently. The film isn't too wordy, so
she has to express a lot through her face or how she carries herself. Ben
Foster has been great for years. It doesn't seem possible that his career could
already have the longevity that it does. Equally mystifying is that he's never
landed any awards attention. In Leave No Trace, he's the polar opposite
of his characters from movies like Hell or High Water
or 3:10 to Yuma. He's stoic to the point of inertness. I can't think of
many characters who look more uncomfortable and out of place sitting in a
carpeted room. Both McKenzie and Foster must've done some wilderness training.
They build fires and feather wood like they've been doing it for years. My
understanding is that Granik casts the rest of her movie with a mix of regular
people and trained actors. That sounds about right, because everyone else looks
and acts like everyday people you could run into on the street. It adds to the
sparseness and simplicity of the film.
The movie this actually reminds me of is Lean on Pete.
That film from earlier this year is about a boy who travels across the country
in search of a dream he isn't sure even exists. He spends a lot of the film in
mild peril and has to be more adult than someone his age should be. Leave No
Trace is very much the same except that McKenzie's Tom does have her dad
most of the time. He might as well be a horse though.
As much as I like the film-making on display in Leave
No Trace, I have some problems with where the story goes that I can't get
over. Ben Foster's Will is a bad father. He loves Tom deeply. I have no doubt
about that, but he's awful for her. He puts her in severe danger and wrecks her
life in a number of ways. In Lean on Pete, the father is out of the
picture before he has to face what he's done to his child. In Captain Fantastic, the
father gets to make amends for this experiment with his children that he took
too far. In Leave No Trace, Will forces his daughter to finally be the
adult about it. I get that he's damaged. That's the point of the movie. The
film really lets him off the hook too much for my taste. He has the best of
intentions, but he abuses that child. Plain and simple. There has to be some
accountability for that. I ended up disliking Will much more than the film
seems to by the end.
I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this
movie. I rejected the core of the film but liked everything else about it.
However, that one thing colors my opinion of nearly every scene. I suppose my
award analogy would be that I'd root for McKenzie and Foster to get acting
nominations. I wouldn't mind Granik getting a director nod as well as others
getting technical nominations. I wouldn't want it to get a Best Picture nomination
though. It probably doesn't help that Lean on Pete covered similar
territory earlier this year without the central flaw. And I do worry that I'm
getting too hung up about one element, because the rest of so well done. It
makes me want to forgive it. I can't do it.
Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend
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