"Captain Fantastic" is a warm, utopian film based on the structure of a road film. It romantically and ideally shows the possibility of confronting the mainstream society in an ambiguous state. The film can still feel the American hippie culture of the last century. However, the film’s mental antagonism has been softened to a certain extent under the package of warmth core and fresh brand. This is undoubtedly reflected in the lofty intention of this film, but it finally focuses on a smaller format. On the above, the creators ultimately did not show the ambition of deep mining. However, although it is just a utopian warmth skit, it is enough to make some viewers who yearn for freedom feel pleasing to the eye.
The forest utopian family’s confrontation with mainstream social values in the movie is mainly reflected in these levels: first, confrontation with the way of survival, which is far away from the mainstream society compared to the modern mainstream lifestyle immersed in materialism and consumerism. The forest family lived in a wilderness-style mountain life, with a strong body, outstanding ability to survive in the wild, and the restraint and purity of the Puritans, making it more like a Spartan family; the second is the confrontation of spiritual values, the forest utopia The family highly worships knowledge. The father conducts anarchical elitist education for his children (seriously leftist), and opposes the modern mainstream capitalist fast food culture; the third is the default value of religion, customs, class system and other mainstream society Confrontation of orientation, the forest family advocates natural philosophy, advocating speculation, questioning everything, and flaunting absolute freedom, human rights and equality. However, the seemingly perfect utopia also has certain flaws. The utopian world that the forest family advertises with nature, physical fitness, knowledge, freedom, and speculation as the main core cannot avoid some ambiguous problems.
The first is the knowledge system. The forest family has elevated the advocacy of knowledge to a high level, but when confronted with the mainstream value of society, they have to use the eldest son to gather all Ivy League offers, and the younger daughter’s backlash on the human rights program. It is embarrassing to use the criteria to prove for yourself. In addition, the father in the movie is not an all-powerful intellectual. His classical elitist education has led to a large knowledge gap for his children. Except for the things in the books, the children know nothing about the whole world and the children’s embarrassing sex. Educational and embarrassing dealings can't help making people hilarious. Secondly, in terms of human rights and freedom, the forest family advertises human rights and freedom, but the father in the film is essentially a gentle totalitarian. His children lose their choice when they are born, and many children in the film return to the mainstream society to participate. The mother’s funeral, what he saw and heard on the road had an impact on the children, but he used his authority to prevent his daughter from making his own choice. The movie shows that the father does everything possible to prevent the younger son from returning to mainstream society and the older son. Choosing to go to college and other plots, so his education method itself is authoritarian, with the deep arrogance and extremeness of elite hippies. So in my opinion, although this utopian family is a brave and romantic rebellion, there are contradictions.
The father in the movie is so loving. After a series of conflicts with mainstream values, the father decides to give the children the freedom of choice and leave by himself. If the film ends here, it will become a utopian elegy. The film simply chooses to use family affection to resolve all this, and chooses to exile his father. Finally, he finds that the children are all hiding in his car. The centripetal force of family affection makes this crisis. It is properly resolved. On the one hand, it preserved the face of an idealist; on the other hand, it used family affection to reach a consensus with the mainstream society. Family affection resolves the most important dramatic contradictions in the movie, and gives the movie a very warm style, but it also prevents the movie from thinking deeper and allows the movie to stay on a smaller format. Just like the various leftist speeches and philosophical speculations in the movies, most of them are just symbols that stop tasting.
Sundance’s dark horses, road trips, conflicts in family relationships, teasing and confrontation of mainstream social concepts, "Captain Fantastic" has to be reminiscent of "Little Sunshine Beauty" many years ago. As a country on wheels, American road movies have long become a very distinctive cultural stage. The utopian story born on this stage has brought me a big surprise. As the second work of Matt Rose, "Captain Fantastic" is already excellent enough. In fact, the director of the film, Matt Rose, is widely known to play the hacked technology giant Gavin Belson in the hot drama "Silicon Valley" in recent years. Before that, few people knew that he was also a director, but with "Captain Amazing", Ma Rose not only won the best director of this year's Sundance Film Festival, he also won a little at Cannes.
Fighting against modern mainstream social values in an idealistic but gentle way is really a potion of hemp-flavored (hippy spirit) spiritual chicken soup (family movie). For most half-hearted intellectuals who want to be cool but can't get cool, "Captain Magic" The constructed idealistic utopian family is nothing less than a spiritual banner, which romantically shows the possibility under an ambiguous state, in which we and the social values we are fighting against may be able to reach a consensus in silence.
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