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Leave No Trace
Jul. 28th, 2018 05:55 pmIt occurred to me that if I delayed any longer in writing my review of Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace, it would be out of the theaters before I posted it, and that would be a great shame. Leave No Trace is well worth seeing, and so I'm posting about it even though I don't think my ramblings do it justice.
And forest shots there are in plenty. Thirteen-year-old Tom and her father, war veteran Will, live hidden away in the forests of a national park near Portland. Their life seems idyllic (or at least, that’s how I felt about it; other reviewers have described it as “child endangerment”), but living in a tent in a national park is illegal, and soon enough they get caught by the police and carted off to be rehabilitated into society.
Tom is ambivalent about the prospect. She’s concerned that she won’t be able to fit in with her classmates, but also cautiously intrigued by the idea of meeting new people, like the devotional dancers at church or the neighbor boy with a rabbit, who takes her to a 4H meeting of fellow young rabbit breeders. (There’s no romantic angle here. Tom’s just meeting new people.)
Will, however, is appalled. He loathes dependence on modern technology and he’s not too hot on being around other people - both qualities to which his PTSD contributes, although there may be some wild Thoreauvianism going on here too. Soon enough, he’s plunged them back into the wilderness.
“He has to provide you with a home,” the social worker tries to explain to Tom, soon after they’re first removed from the woods. Tom replies, a hint of defiance in her tone, “He did.” And it’s true. They had a roof over their heads and it kept them warm and dry, even if it was a tent. They had enough to eat. Will is an attentive and emotionally involved father; Tom is well-versed not only in wilderness survival but in academic subjects. (Indeed, said social worker notes that Tom is ahead of grade level.) Yes, they’re isolated, but probably no more than many Christian homeschooling families, and no one is coming after them with dogs.
The main thing wrong with their lifestyle (aside from the fact that they’re illegally trespassing on national park land) is that it’s really weird, and not weird in a way where you can slot them into a category with a bunch of other people doing the same weird thing (like Christian homeschooling families) who make up a community and therefore constitute their own kind of normal. Their community, such as it is, is “other homeless vets living illegally in the park.”
And this set me thinking about whether normalcy is an emotional need for most humans - not in the sense that we all secretly long for white picket fences and the other trappings of a 1950s vision of normalcy, but in the sense that most people do long for a group of people among whom they will feel normal. The happy ending of outsider stories is generally “and then I found a bunch of people who were weird the same way I am,” not “and then I jubilantly accepted that I really was totally unlike everyone else and would be alone forever.”
Although Will, at least, seems to have concluded (not jubilantly, but without undue despair) that this is true for him. Even when their path takes them to a community of misfits, many of them war veterans (one of whom lends Will his therapy dog while Will recovers from a badly sprained ankle), he doesn’t want and can’t accept the community they offer.
Leave No Trace is not as propulsively plotted as Granik’s earlier work, Winter’s Bone. But it’s an atmospheric, beautifully shot, and subtly haunting film that leaves behind a lot of questions about the nature of home, and society, and the sacrifices one makes - or won’t make - to be a part of a community.
And forest shots there are in plenty. Thirteen-year-old Tom and her father, war veteran Will, live hidden away in the forests of a national park near Portland. Their life seems idyllic (or at least, that’s how I felt about it; other reviewers have described it as “child endangerment”), but living in a tent in a national park is illegal, and soon enough they get caught by the police and carted off to be rehabilitated into society.
Tom is ambivalent about the prospect. She’s concerned that she won’t be able to fit in with her classmates, but also cautiously intrigued by the idea of meeting new people, like the devotional dancers at church or the neighbor boy with a rabbit, who takes her to a 4H meeting of fellow young rabbit breeders. (There’s no romantic angle here. Tom’s just meeting new people.)
Will, however, is appalled. He loathes dependence on modern technology and he’s not too hot on being around other people - both qualities to which his PTSD contributes, although there may be some wild Thoreauvianism going on here too. Soon enough, he’s plunged them back into the wilderness.
“He has to provide you with a home,” the social worker tries to explain to Tom, soon after they’re first removed from the woods. Tom replies, a hint of defiance in her tone, “He did.” And it’s true. They had a roof over their heads and it kept them warm and dry, even if it was a tent. They had enough to eat. Will is an attentive and emotionally involved father; Tom is well-versed not only in wilderness survival but in academic subjects. (Indeed, said social worker notes that Tom is ahead of grade level.) Yes, they’re isolated, but probably no more than many Christian homeschooling families, and no one is coming after them with dogs.
The main thing wrong with their lifestyle (aside from the fact that they’re illegally trespassing on national park land) is that it’s really weird, and not weird in a way where you can slot them into a category with a bunch of other people doing the same weird thing (like Christian homeschooling families) who make up a community and therefore constitute their own kind of normal. Their community, such as it is, is “other homeless vets living illegally in the park.”
And this set me thinking about whether normalcy is an emotional need for most humans - not in the sense that we all secretly long for white picket fences and the other trappings of a 1950s vision of normalcy, but in the sense that most people do long for a group of people among whom they will feel normal. The happy ending of outsider stories is generally “and then I found a bunch of people who were weird the same way I am,” not “and then I jubilantly accepted that I really was totally unlike everyone else and would be alone forever.”
Although Will, at least, seems to have concluded (not jubilantly, but without undue despair) that this is true for him. Even when their path takes them to a community of misfits, many of them war veterans (one of whom lends Will his therapy dog while Will recovers from a badly sprained ankle), he doesn’t want and can’t accept the community they offer.
Leave No Trace is not as propulsively plotted as Granik’s earlier work, Winter’s Bone. But it’s an atmospheric, beautifully shot, and subtly haunting film that leaves behind a lot of questions about the nature of home, and society, and the sacrifices one makes - or won’t make - to be a part of a community.
