Director: Debra Granik
Talent: Thomasin McKenzie, Ben Foster, Jeffery Rifflard, Michael Draper
Released: 29 June
Debra Granik’s follow-up to 2010’s Winter’s Bone sees a father, Dale, and his daughter, Tom, living intently, yet furtively, in a nature reserve near Portland, Oregon. Naturally, as plot mechanics dictate, their prelapsarian idyll cannot last, but what unfolds is an emotionally resonant experience, playing out with a delicacy and a quiet grace that really takes you back.
What sets this film apart from the others with a similar focus – Into The Wild, Captain Fantastic – is the nuance it deploys in the scenes where these would-be survivalists get caught up with civilisation once again.
At first, we are wholly sympathetic to their simple wish to be left alone. We soon see, however, that this is not a simple case of people living at one with nature, as the pair take regular trips to the supermarket to buy confectionary. When the authorities do get involved, what strikes us isn’t their brutishness, but their willingness to understand this family’s perspective. Along their journey, the people who take them in aren’t bovine zombies representing the vacuity of organised society, but instead are kind and willing to trust them. There are moments of gentle satire, say, when a gormless looking boy takes a selfie of himself on a bus, or the governmental bureaucracy that processes them. For the most part, though, Dale’s antipathy for organised society is not confirmed by Granik’s humanistic lens; his stubborn stance says a lot about our tendency to project our demons onto unworthy targets. And yet, his perspective isn’t exactly negated either. While these products of the society are well-meaning, such a normative establishment doesn’t make many allowances for men of his stripe, and Tom would have been perfectly happy remaining in the forest had she not seen what she was missing. The film, though doleful, doesn’t lack warmth, and is un-cynical about human nature in refreshing ways.
Gradually, almost imperceptibly, we learn Dale’s self-exile is less to do with naive idealism, and more to do with deep psychical wounds. We get the full complexity of what family entanglement can bring. Though his daughter Tom can’t help but be inquisitive of the world she was ‘sheltered’ from, she understands and sympathises with her father’s need to renounce it. The world is beckoning Tom, but she will always be her father’s daughter.
As their differences become more apparent, what we get are not pat confrontation scenes, but multivalent ones where both characters understand the other while pushing for their own desires. The film is never didactic, and is ultimately about emotions. I had shed several tears by the end. It would be an absolute outrage to spoil such an affecting ending, but suffice to say the generosity of spirit and mutual understanding of the two characters will leave you all a-tingle.
Granik’s characters are introverts, whose tactile capability and earthiness are their strength. Granik’s previous film boasted a star-making turn by Jennifer Lawrence. If there’s any justice, the same will follow for Thomasin McKensie. She manages to exude both a feral potency and a cautious vulnerability. If anything, the way the character is written is a bit too dignified, but McKensie utterly convinces. This precociousness is not of the cutesy, stomach-turning variety so popular in perky indie films, but rather it is borne of a deep sensitivity combined with a robustness from living rough.
A quietly overwhelming experience, free of violence and snarky irony.
Words: Rory Kiberd
