I first became aware of Debra Granik's latest directorial feature, Leave No Trace, while reading through an article a few months back about films that had premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. I didn't really become invested until I read a review about the film less than a week before I saw it. I was immediately struck by the central and profound father-daughter story set in the wilderness, as well as its transition to modern civilization and back again.
The story (based on the fictional 2009 novel, "My Abandonment," by Peter Rock) centers on a war veteran named Will (indie and blockbuster veteran Ben Foster), who struggles with PTSD, and who tries to maintain a way of life for himself and his 13-year-old daughter Tom (newcomer Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie) by living off the grid (illegally) on public park land.
From the opening scene, I was immediately moved and entranced by the relationship not only between these two characters, but also their relationship with nature--the only lifestyle Tom has apparently ever known. The way they get fires going. The plants they grow. The rare times they go into the nearest town for food and medicine. The way they practice emergency drills. The way they communicate with clicking sounds. Even the nightmares that Will has (possibly memories of his late wife, and the mother Tom never knew). And Michael McDonough's cinematography of the woods and nature in general is so beautifully done.
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| Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie |
The majority of the emotions and character motivations come through dialogue-free moments. This is obviously a different genre than the equally-engrossing-though-more-frightening A Quiet Place. Yet, there is some intensity in Dickon Hinchliffe's otherwise-tender score and in the sound design, as Tom and Will are forced back into society by social services and recommended to live in an isolated home, but still in touch with nature. "A lot of people like to imagine living the way you two were living," one man tells them. Will and Tom may be by themselves in this setting, but they're not the same. Not from thereon, at least.
Foster and McKenzie are simply amazing. Their portrayal of a relationship that is tender and conflicting, with growing and quiet tension, is thoroughly believable and heartbreaking. (Some viewers may recall such films as Into the Wild and, maybe, Room, in terms of these dynamics.) Obviously, it becomes difficult for these characters (more so for Will) to adjust to a civilian lifestyle. Will's job, for one thing, includes cutting down Christmas trees, like watching nature being forced down around/along with him.
Based on the film's trailer, we think we know what will happen, but the second half of the story turns out to be as unpredictable as the characters' directions. "I don't think we knew where we were going," says Tom. They face different conditions, altitudes and subtle pressures. Other characters they come in contact with range from professional truck drivers to RV residents and landlords, an army medic, and even a beekeeper, who all mean well but make it hard for Will to adapt. (What's interesting how metaphorical beekeeping in terms of gaining the trust of potentially wild creatures in a large world.)
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| Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie and Ben Foster |
The ultimate question viewers ask is, what are these characters (particularly Will) running from? Are they capable of social skills and not just intellectual ones? Foster has played soldiers before (in 2009's The Messenger and 2013's Lone Survivor), but, perhaps, never to this level of internal struggle.
Granik's previous feature, 2010's Winter's Bone, was a bleak tale set in the Ozarks of Missouri, where a seventeen-year-old girl (a then-unknown Jennifer Lawrence) searches for her missing father while trying to keep a roof over her family's home in the woods. Like that film, Granik has found a remarkable and amazing young actress to fill her lead female's shoes. McKenzie (a New Zealand native) shows real innocence and development in Tom, not just by how society has impacted her, but by experiencing a sense of community and belonging, whether with animals or people. She even becomes something of a mother figure to her father. The notion of growing up and letting your children go is nothing new to parent-children stories, but Granik's adapted screenplay (co-written by Anne Rosselini) uses its atmosphere and circumstances to make it fresh and even heartbreaking.
Quite simply, Leave No Trace is a tender and aching film. It's one of the best you'll see this year, hands down.
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