BEFORE: I'm sort of counting down to Mother's Day now, but in a roundabout way - yesterday's film was about a teen mother dying at the start of the film, leaving a midwife to deal with the baby, and tonight I'm on similar territory, with a mother who's barely in the film, and the family that has to deal with her absence. I don't think there's any more maternal stuff until Sunday, the next five films are just a chain of randoms that's going to get me there, but you never know.
Viggo Mortensen carries over from "Eastern Promises".
THE PLOT: In the forests of the Pacific Northwest, a father devoted to raising his six kids with a rigorous physical and intellectual education is forced to leave his paradise and enter the world, challenging his idea of what it means to be a parent.
AFTER: Really, this is about a family of six kids that has been raised quite unconventionally - the film would choose that we not see living out in the woods as "worse" or even "better" than living as part of society, it's just different. Which of course, it is, but the question then arises over why this is taking place. The family's mantras are "Power to the People!" and "Stick it to the Man!" so that suggests that they're leftovers from the hippie movement or the 1970's protestor movement.
If you think about it, it's only the most extreme right- or left-wingers that are likely to go out and live in the woods, like a horrible camping trip that never ends. On one end of the spectrum you've got the green hippie naturalists, who grow their own toilet paper and are totally plant-diet and are off the grid to try to reduce their own carbon footprint, and way on the other side, you've got the doomsday preppers who are stockpiling weapons in case of nuclear war, the zombie apocalypse or another black President. One group thinks urban society is completely corrupt and morally bankrupt, while the other group thinks terrorists could overthrow society and bomb us back to the Stone Age - it probably makes for some heated conversations in the trailer park, that's all I'm saying.
The family here is much more in the first theological camp - through they're not all vegan, they hunt deer and other wild game, plus they celebrate Noam Chomsky's birthday instead of Christmas, so clearly the issue is with the corrupt nature of society, parents who believe they can do a better job educating their children than the school system can - and I'm not saying they're wrong - but are those kids vaccinated? The plan to live off the grid works fine until somebody needs medical attention, and that turns out to be the mother here. Various references are made to her condition, something about seratonin and her brain not making the right electrical impulses, which makes me wonder if that's all just a euphemism for something.
Ben is left to break the news to their six (!!) kids and to maintain their rigorous physical training and reading schedule. It's clear that their parents set out to mold individuals (with unique first names) and wanted to make sure that their kids didn't just learn about history and government, but also understood it, and there's a wide void between those two things for most teens. Also, no video games, no soda, no processed food, and a determination to answer all of their children's questions about life, even the awkward ones. It's noble, but it could create teens that are hyper-aware of the world, yet unable to function socially within it. The oldest son, Bodevan, is intelligent enough to get into an Ivy League college, but collapses when given the opportunity to talk to a pretty girl.
Naturally there are going to be problems when Ben takes the 6 kids on the road to attend their mother's funeral, a place that they've been expressly told to stay away from. The problem is, staying away doesn't seem possible for a man who's been bucking the system for so long - plus the whole casket and church service thing is in direct conflict with what his wife's burial wishes were. So the funeral visit becomes both a way to "stick it to the man" and also a "rescue mission" that puts this family up against their mother's parents. Who seem like generally nice people, they also seem to have the kids' best interests at heart, only their way of demonstrating this is to get a lot of lawyers involved to sue for custodial rights, so the kids can be raised indoors. They mean well, but it's very possible that the kids have been away from society too long, that they can't be integrated.
It's a NITPICK POINT to me that the family stops at a roadside diner and the father claims that "there's no actual food on the menu". OK, I'll give you the fact that hot dogs are completely synthetic (yet delicious), but what's his problem with pancakes and bacon? That's like nature's perfect food, right? And you can totally eat pancakes when you're camping. I mean, sorry that they're not made with stone-ground oat flour or quinoa or something, and that the bacon comes from a farm-raised pig and not a deer found by the side of the road, but if you've got a problem with pancakes and maple syrup, then I've got a problem with you. That's real food, no matter how you look at it.
But it is true that burial of a human is an incredible waste of space, and so our whole view on death and remembrance really needs to be examined with an eye toward changing it. It's something like 36 cubic feet that gets taken up by a gravesite, and then that land can never be used for anything else, at least not for a hundred years or so? Cremation's not much better, because it's a waste of energy to burn up a body and then an urn with the ashes still might want to be stored somewhere and take up space. Spreading the ashes? Forget about it, that's an environmental hazard in some way, I'm sure. The latest techniques that really need to be considered are the freezing technique - not cryogenics, that's a storage nightmare, too - but a new process where a body is put in liquid nitrogen, then vibrated into little tiny bits. After they remove any metals from dental implants and such, the remaining dust can be placed in a biodegradable casket, which gets placed in topsoil and then fully decomposes in 6-12 months. "Promession", that's the name of this process.
There's another process that takes cremated bodies and turns them into diamond-like gems, I think that sounds rather nifty. People can now turn their pet's ashes into unique diamonds in different colors, which is a way to cheer up grieving pet owners, make something beautiful out of their ashes, and end up with something to wear or display. Well, it's an idea, anyway - I might consider becoming a gem someday if I die. That's probably preferable to what takes place in this film, even if it leads to a tender family moment.
Like it or hate it, at least this film is very thought-provoking about the best way to raise children. Obviously everyone thinks they're doing well but secretly wonders if they're really screwing up their kids, right? I don't know enough to say what's right and what's wrong, but at least there's a different point of view reflected here, an admission that there's not ONE single way of doing it.
Also starring George MacKay (last seen in "Peter Pan"), Frank Langella (last seen in "Dracula"), Steve Zahn (last seen in "You've Got Mail"), Kathryn Hahn (last heard in "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse"), Ann Dowd (last seen in "Collateral Beauty"), Missi Pyle (last seen in "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle"), Samantha Isler, Annalise Basso, Nicholas Hamilton (last seen in "It"), Shree Crooks, Charlie Shotwell (last seen in "All the Money in the World"), Trin Miller, Elijah Stevenson, Teddy Van Ee, Erin Moriarty (last seen in "The Watch").
RATING: 6 out of 10 boning knives
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