Skip to main content

Captain Fantastic Review - [Insert Contrived "Fantastic" Pun Here]


Being an indie film, Captain Fantastic had a relatively limited cinema release, meaning I missed its run at my local artsy hipster cinema. So, I set off from my comfortable home, narrowly escaped three darkly clad horse riders, traversed through ancient mines, confronted a colossal spider, scaled an active volcano and finally reached Nottingham, where I sat down in a comfortable - if rather beardy - cinema. After enduring such a journey, was the film worth it?

In short, yes. I've seen many good films this year, but Captain Fantastic is one of my favourites*. It focuses on Viggo Mortensen's Ben Cash, a father raising his six kids away from society. He teaches them self sufficiency and to reject consumerism, instilling in them his intensely left wing views. You'd expect the film to feel preachy, but it never does. Writer/director Matt Ross ensures that the viewer empathises with Ben without having to agree with him, exploring the convincing motivations behind his beliefs and constantly challenging them. It's a masterfully balanced character study that's always believable and uniquely compelling.

The plot itself is wonderfully unpredictable, revolving around Ben and his kids exploring the real world to attend their mother's funeral. At its core it's a road trip film, but it perfectly optimises that for its character's development. Ben is forced to question how he's raising his children when their safety is put at risk and they struggle to mix with others. Meanwhile, his eldest son experiences romance for the first time, providing moments of hilarity and poignancy. The residents of the real world, such as Ben's father-in-law, aren't simply antagonists either, but have their lifestyles equally challenged by the situation. The only disappointing characters are the rest of Ben's children, who are merely there to develop other characters or crack jokes.

All of this is presented beautifully through the directing, cinematography and music. Ross brings the best out of his actors, with Mortensen and George MacKay (as Cash's eldest) delivering the strongest and most nuanced performances. Ross even gets solid work from the younger cast members who provide much of the film's gleeful energy. Meanwhile, Stéphane Fontaine's cinematography ensures every shot is bursting with colour and Alex Somers (frequent collaborator of Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Rós) provides a delicately subtle score. Each of these elements is used precisely when it's needed to bolster the story and characters without getting in the way. Captain Fantastic has style, but it only improves the substance.

Despite its title, Captain Fantastic is the perfect antidote for those tired of the current barrage of Hollywood superhero films. Its daring originality makes it stand out from the crowd, whilst its rich characters, powerful performances, gorgeous cinematography and touching score make for one of the most well rounded films of the year.

9/10

*End of year top 10 coming, not coincidentally, at the end of the year.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hail, Caesar! Review - Genius Behind the Madness

On an entirely surface level, Hail, Caesar! is a really silly film. The sets are bright and colourful, the characters are bombastic and larger than life and the plot is completely insane and all over the place. If you take a closer look, however, it's much more intelligent than it initially comes off as. Yes, the sets are bright, but their attention to detail is so fantastically minute, you're totally convinced that this is the 50's. The fake film sets are also just as convincing and the films themselves could easily pass off as authentic, if it wasn't for the 21st Century actors populating them. They are obviously slightly exaggerated, for the sake of satire, which probably resonates more with those familiar with retro cinema than regular filmgoers. It's also shot brilliantly by cinematographer Roger Deakins (who was recently Oscar nominated for his work on Sicario ), who manages to make the film feel like something that's not only set in the 50's, bu...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is Avengers: Age of Ultron Any Good?

Avengers Assemble! Again! Avengers: Age of Ultron - Film Review by Nathan Brooks And they say English Weather's bad. Back in the summer of 2012, a little film came out called Avengers Assemble. It wasn't much. It's only the biggest superhero film of all time and it only made $1.518 billion. Everybody loved it, I loved it and clearly moviegoers did as well.  Due to its massive success, obviously a sequel was going to be made. In this case, that sequel is Avengers: Age of Ultron, but with all the hype it's received, is it actually any good? Story The story in this film is definitely not for first time Marvel viewers, you really need to see most, if not all, of the previous Marvel Cinematic Universe films. It is packed full of references to earlier films and understanding a lot of elements of the story will require you to have seen the others. But is the story any good? I thinks so. The main story centres around the fact that Tony Stark, or Iron Man, has ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Complicated Entitlement of Arthur Fleck

Joker’s (Probably) Accidental Identity Politics The discourse around Joker , the Joaquin Phoenix-starring origin story of the infamous Batman villain, has been exhausting. Beginning before most people had even seen the film, battle lines were immediately drawn between those decrying its allegedly alt-right sympathies and edgy gamers convinced this was going to be the greatest film of all time. Now that it’s actually in cinemas and I’ve seen it, it’s a lot more complicated than that, even if it isn’t on purpose. To get it out of the way, Joker is a fantastically constructed film. Whilst it’s certainly derivative of other prestige pictures (Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and King of Comedy have been regularly brought up) that doesn’t stop it from being spectacular and gripping in its own right. At the centre of it all is Phoenix, who’s performance is genuinely astonishing. The gruesome physicality he brings to the role is mesmerising, exemplified during the surreal dance sequences i...
Post a Comment
Read more