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Canberra Today 12°/15° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Review / ‘Captain Fantastic’ (M) *** and a half

captainfantastic-movieNO, despite that title, writer/director Mark Ross’s film doesn’t portend a blockbuster full of aliens, outer-space manifestations, violence and destruction.

It’s a wondrous collection of elements, events and ideas – a family saga, a road movie, a study of contemporary American society from unexpected perspectives, a profound drama based on simple motivations, a homage to America the beautiful, a wickedly clever comedy built out of everyday events, happy times, sad times, a polemic about how the US might well become the creator of its own demise. There’s nothing new in that catalogue. But Ross’s compiling of it is admirable.

Ben (Viggo Mortensen) and his six children have carved out a lifestyle in the Pacific north-west wilderness. That is a metaphor less for rejection of a nation at risk of survival than for a solution of fundamental problems. The drama flows from Ben’s wife’s suicide in hospital where she was being treated for an incurable condition.

Her father Jack (Frank Langella) has told Ben he is not welcome at the funeral and that he’ll tell the police to arrest them if they appear. The wife has made a will that rejects the traditional approach to what happens after death. No document that civilised mankind makes is more sacred than a will. Ben and the children pack up and set off eastward in the big blue bus to defy Jack’s injunction.

It’s a lovely story, frank in its rejection of modern modes and customs, made with great creative skill and affection for its themes, at no point in its 119 minutes presenting a burden to the filmgoer’s interest.

At Palace Electric and Dendy

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Dougal Macdonald

Dougal Macdonald

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