Captain Fantastic review 

"Captain Fantastic," written and directed by Matt Ross, presents a family who have retreated
from the world into the wilderness of Oregon. Viggo Mortensen portrays Ben, a devoted father of
six, who raises his children far from the concrete jungles of civilization. Ben and his wife
abandoned modern life to raise their six children deep in the woods, teaching them high-minded
ideals, intellectual theories and wilderness living. For years, he and wife, Leslie (Trin Miller),
have been living with their six kids, who range in age from 7 to 18, on a compound where they
are fighting for survival in a modern society that’s grown increasingly removed from the natural
world. By day they hunt for food and scale rocky cliffs; at night they read The Brothers
Karamazov  while discussing Marxism and Noam Chomsky. It’s meant to be a paradise born of
Plato’s Republic, but did this crazy life soothe or exacerbate the bipolar disorder that afflicted
their now absent mother, and for which various family members blame Ben? After Leslie, the
mother, dies, the family is forced to venture into the “civilized” world to attend her funeral…
Family encounter supermarkets, trailer parks and suburban family suppers for the first time, with
lively culture-clash results

It’s rare to see a movie sympathetic to this sort of individualistic or even anarchistic ideals which
strive to forge a new world, despite everything… "Captain Fantastic" tries to answer the question
whether it is possible to live in modern age, i.e. in the modern world, but not in accordance with
its rules and values. The film tries to convey a bitter truth in a credible and at times touching way,
that it is impossible, despite all the efforts of a family whose life the film follows, to build a
parallel system which would represent a worthy alternative to the modern world and its pseudo-
values. The idea of creating a parallel system, that is in essence a micro-society, still remains a
sublime ideal that can be strived for but not achieved. However, perhaps the greatest advantage
and virtue of this type of resistance and rebellion against the modern world lies in the fact that it
does not require any contact, conflict or compromise with the dominant framework of the society
and modern civilization. So such pursuit and a renewal of “the old ways of life” is sustainable
and it can remain a safe refuge for everyone who doesn’t want to be part of the modern
civilization until the day it collapses. Only time will tell whether this way of rebellious life, that
takes place on the margins of society will one day create a new world on the ruins of the old or
will the humanity be forced to fully obey all the rules and requirements that life in civilization
imposes on him.