Although "Captain Fantastic" has a very beautiful comic style title, its essence is a niche literary film. This independent film participated in this year's Cannes Film Festival and won the Best Director Award in the "A Kind of Concern" unit. Newcomer director Matt Rose uses the form of a road film to tell the story of a naturalistic, "isolated" family that gradually merges with popular life. From the perspective of the family, the film still replays the old tune of the division and unity of family members' emotions and values. From a social point of view, the film makes a horizontal comparison between the family’s life philosophy and education methods and contemporary social life to reflect on the excessive expansion of material desires and consumerism in the capital society.
In "On the Origin of Human Inequality", Rousseau emphasized that primitive people have strong bodies, quick responses, and brave spirit due to the tempering of nature. However, with the development of human civilization, the bondage of human civilization began As people increase, their naturalness, bodily functions, and courage also degenerate, thus becoming cowardly, timid, and selfish. Therefore, in Rousseau's philosophy, there is a theory of approaching nature and returning to the basics.
The father Ben in the film is obviously a practitioner of Rousseau's theory. The film opens with a jungle hunt to show that the family admires nature and returns to the simple and hidden life. Then the plot begins to explain the unique education method of his father Ben. Through the cruel education method of "jungle training", the children have strong physique and strong character. At the same time, he guided the children to read and cultivated their ability to think independently. His son Rellian was injured in rock climbing and he could get out of trouble alone with courage and calmness. His daughter Kielyr expressed her opinions on "Lolita" alone. These are all manifestations of the successful side of Ben's education method. However, Ben has overly misinterpreted Rousseau's "Return to Nature". ", regard the material, religion, and politics of civilized society as scourges, completely separating children from the real society. Although they have knowledge and abilities far superior to those of their peers, they are also extremely lack of social experience and interpersonal communication. Regarding this, the film also explains in detail. The cramps and discomforts revealed by the eldest son Bo’s interaction with the girl highlight his lack of social experience. The youngest daughter Zaja can easily interpret the Bill of Rights, but he doesn’t know what adidas is. It also showed her ignorance of the real society.
Education is divided into family, school, and society. Ben can replace family and school by himself, but he cannot replace society. The relationship between book knowledge and social experience is just like boat and water. Even though Ben's children have a big boat made by knowledge, without the vast ocean of society, they are ultimately waterless boats and cannot sail far.
The death of Ben's wife became an opportunity for the children to get out of the jungle, and the film has evolved into a standard road movie. The director's treatment of this funeral episode is very similar to a road movie in the 1960s. After all, the theme of "on the road" was originally a collection of the "beaten young people" of that era. In the film, Ben’s contempt for obesity, junk food, and traditional education methods reveals the dilemma of material consumption and empty spiritual life in modern civilization. This family’s anti-mainstream values and the hippie culture advocated by young people in the 1960s. The spirit of rebellion coincides with each other, and the brisk psychedelic soundtrack used in the road journey, the beautiful and romantic photography in natural light, and the bright and bright color combination all reveal the beauty of a small fresh literary film.
The journey in highway movies is often the process of creating and resolving contradictions in the film plot. Ben’s children’s suspicion of their father’s values stems from what they saw and felt during the journey. The farce at the mother’s funeral also intensified the child’s rebellion against Ben. However, Ben remained stubborn, and it was not until his daughter’s accidental injury that he rethink his lifestyle. , And suddenly realized that the "ideal country" I created for my children is actually just a "utopia" out of touch with reality.
At the end of the film, Ben and the children cremated the body at the beach and flushed the ashes into the sewer according to his wife's will. This absurd and unruly plot is very similar to the allusion of "singing with a drum" in "Zhuangzi", and the essence of both is to express open-mindedness and optimism in dealing with issues of life and death.
The whole film is permeated with this relaxed and optimistic atmosphere. Specifically, the first half of the film is more exciting, and the social problems it reveals and the dilemmas of the characters are very thoughtful. Since the "church funeral", the plot of the film has tended to teach family harmony, and the reason for Ben's thought change in the plot is also slightly vulgar. The latter half of the story is relatively weak and loses its sharp and profound strength.
On the whole, "Captain Fantastic" is by no means a disease-free groan of literary youth. The film timely pointed out the phenomena of "excessive consumption" and "civilization disease" in contemporary society, and also revealed the social people's dependence on materiality and neglect of nature. In the ending, Ben's attitude changed, and the resolution of family conflicts symbolized naturalism and material civilization from opposition to unity. It's just that such an idealized family can hardly exist in reality.
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