Why A Lot Of People Got It Wrong About ‘Captain Fantastic’

When you’re a parent, you can do everything right and still have problems with your child. There is no textbook for how to raise a child as long as you don’t do irreparable damage. I had a science teacher tell me all her father had to do was give her a look when she was in trouble and she’d straighten up. However, her sister wouldn’t cry but laugh when she was being spanked.

There’s a debate over corporal punishment and which demographics use it the most and which use it less. I have a theory that the history of racial discrimination has led to more corporal punishment, somewhat very brutal, in non-white people. In Richard Pryor’s autobiography, Pryor Convictions, he recalls that one time his grandmother who he called “Momma” hit him with a skillet for refusing to help wash and dry the dishes with him. This was when he was an adult and had people working for him to do the housework. Was Richie joking or serious?

I remember Whoopi Goldberg, when she didn’t feel well, got on to her own daughter, just for checking in on her. I know we’ve all been there where we just want peace and quiet and no one to even ask us any simple questions. But Whoopi said she realized that her daughter was just being considerate and caring. And when the day comes when she passes, her daughter is going to be the one who’s contacted. She doesn’t want to create many problems.

I know so many people who have mostly gone No Contact with their parents. I think part of the problem is some parents think they are doing what’s in the child’s best interest but they view their kids as an extension of themselves not individual people. Your parents want you to eat what they eat, even the snacks. My mom loved oatmeal creme pies, but if I ever live to be 109 and never eat another one, it will be too soon. Moon pies are also overrated too.

Parents make mistakes. Traditionally, they’ve been told they don’t have to admit it. It’s things likes, “I’m the parent; you’re the child” or “Because I said so.” But this is the talk of someone who is just telling their child that they’re never going to be allowed to do anything. And maybe it was because it was done to them, they act like this. But you don’t raise your child like in The Lords of Discipline. Just because you were treated badly as a child, it doesn’t mean you should be looking to beat your child just because. I’ve covered too many child abuse cases where a lot parents thought they were child-rearing but it was really awful.

Captain Fantastic looks at what happens when parents have the best intention but it spirals out of control. The movie, written and directed by actor Matt Ross, reminds me of The Mosquito Coast, but at least the paternal character admits he did things wrong. I like Harrison Ford but Coast, even though it was filmed miles from where I grew up, is a nauseating movie about a guy who thinks he’s always right and everyone, even his own wife and children, are always wrong. It reminds me of Life Below Zero and the narcissism and pretentiousness of the people on the show who can’t go three minutes without patting themselves on the back for choosing to live above the artic circle. At the same time, they’re constantly berating everyone else who uses butcher shops and supermarkets to buy their food.

Ben Cash (Viggo Mortensen in his Oscar-nominated role) is a narcissists who thinks his decision to raise his children off the grid in the Pacific Northwest is the best thing for them. Unfortunately, they are unprepared for modern day life. They hunt their own food. Ben also makes sure they’re heavily educated as well as physically active by doing yoga and even rock climbing. Ironically, even though Ben wants to live a more rustic way of life and have his children be more independent, he is actually very controlling. He’s taught them to question authority, just not to question him. It was like Judd Hirsch’s father in Running on Empty who realizes he’s turning into what he protested as a young person part of the counterculture movement.

Ben also thinks he’s better than everyone else, a type of arrogance that is reflected in his children when they get a look at the outside world making comments as all the people at a bank look sick because they’re “fat.” As the movie opens, Ben who drives a modified school bus to the nearest town to collect the mail and to check in on his wife, Leslie (Trin Miller) discovers she committed suicide. His father-in-law, Jack Bertrang (Frank Langella), despises Ben with a passion and feels he drove his daughter crazy with their way of life. He threatens Ben not to come to the funeral in New Mexico. However, they decide to take a road trip anyway.

Unfortunately, the real world is nothing what they anticipated. They look over at everything with wonder. But they’re unable to communicate with their peers. Ben’s eldest son, Bodevan (George MacKay) can’t communicate with young women who are interested in him. He even foolishly proposes marriage to a teenage girl, Claire (Erin Moriarty), he kisses at an RV park. As a teenager who’s been accepted into many colleges, he’s never had contact with people his own age. Claire and her mother, Ellen (Missi Pyle) just laugh it off as he’s joking.

When Ben takes the family to see his sister, Harper (Kathryn Hahn), and her husband, Dave (Steve Zahn), in suburbia, rather embrace their love and hospitality, he immediately criticizes it. Ben is like that one person we all knew in school who wanted everyone to know they didn’t like whatever movies, music or TV shows were popular. It’s ironic his last name is a term for currency. He tells Dave they get by financially because they only spend money on what they need. But they are seen stealing items from a supermarket when Ben fakes a heart attack. It’s obvious this is probably a common thing. Ben tries to rationalize this when Jack questions him about it when he learns from Rellian (Nicholas Hamilton), his younger son, as part of the anti-capitalism stance.

Strangely, Jack and his wife, Abigail (Ann Dowd), live the good live in a mansion on several acres, which the daughters criticize as a waste of space. Jack claims it was Ben who changed Leslie, but she was bipolar. I think what Jack doesn’t want to admit is that it was the wealth and affluence they raised Leslie in that made her turn against it in adulthood. Therefore, it’s possible she sought out someone like Ben who shared her same ideals. In the end, it proves you can’t always tell what’s going on in someone’s mind.

Dave and Harper are good parents even though they live in the suburbs. They make sure their children don’t get too much time playing video games or goofing around on their phone, but they also need to give them space. Yet, Ben berates them for not knowing too much about the Bill of Rights, but he doesn’t realize that book knowledge doesn’t mean much. Bodevan has realized he’s unprepared and when he tells Ben he’s been accepted at major universities, Ben is angry that he applied to colleges behind his back. But what was Ben’s idea? That his kids were going to spend the rest of their lives off the grid? He never entertained the idea of what might happen if they lost both parents.

It seems more or less, Ben wants the kids to adhere to his schedule and way of life. Even their nightly jam sessions seem almost too much of a routine. Ben wants to be involved in every aspect of his children’s life, even asking one to give a criticism of reading Lolita, when it wasn’t on her reading list. George Carlin once criticized parents like Ben who are too focused on their children’s accomplishments to not let them play and have fun. He said every kid should be given time to sit outside and dig a hole with a stick. It doesn’t mean the kids are dumb if they do it. And like some parents, Ben sees his children as a reflection of himself.

I’d argue that Ben is actually with mental issues too. I’d say he’s a neurodivergent. He is incapable of communicating with many other people, which is why he chose to live away from civilization as much as he can. At Leslie’s funeral, he keeps going on adamantly to fulfill her wishes to be cremated on a funeral pyre. As for Jack, he may not be able to tolerate Ben but he has immediate love and affection for his grandkids. During one scene he bonds with them by practicing yoga. He’s not a bad guy but it’s possible there was some tension between Jack and Leslie that never get fully resolved which is why she married Ben, who was everything Jack wasn’t.

Ross only skims the surface of what could’ve been a longer, more thought-out study of parenting and the effects. Unfortunately, because there’s so much attention given to Ben’s relationship with Bodevan and Rellian, that the other four kids get neglected. The other son, Nai (Charlie Shotwell), is often a background character. And the teenage daughters, Kielyr (Samantha Isler) and Vespyr (Annalise Basso), have a couple of scenes but they mainly stay in the background as well. There’s only so much you can do with a two-hour movie and as many characters.

I think the ending does have more of a deus ex machina style with Bodevan going to Nambia while Ben decides to have change things up by letting the kids attend school but they still have a rural country life. I think Ross is showing that you can raise your children in the city, the suburbs or even the country, but they need to have some structure that shows them the better education isn’t from school books or exercise regiments. In the end, Ben realizes this as what he thought was best for him isn’t best for anyone. And living off the grid wasn’t the best for Ben, either.

What do you think? Please comment.