Captain Fantastic

Captain Fantastic is a movie about a family being isolated from all society, by their parents, living deep in the wilderness. While the father, Ben Cash (Viggo Mortensen) raise their children, teaching them self-defence, educating them himself through homeschooling, teaching them how to hunt and survive and “training them to be physically fit and athletic, guiding them in the wild without technology and demonstrating the beauty of co-existing with nature”, his wife, Leslie, dies.

When the news of their mother’s death reach the kids, through Ben, everyone was sort of ‘struggling’ to cope at the start. And, the father of Leslie even threatened Ben that if he ever decides to go to the funeral, he will arrest Ben. The five kids keep pushing their way and pleading to their father to let them ‘rescue’ their mom. When Ben finally agrees on letting them, they must survive the real world, society. The kids are disgusted by the people asking why everyone is so fat and questioning the attitude of society. While all of them rode in their bus heading for the funeral, they encounter so many things like their first time in a restaurant, one of the children asked what “cola” was and got the response of “poison water” from the father. As Ben started noticing everyone started to feel sad, he made everyone celebrate Noam Chomsky day to cheer up.

 

 

My favorite scene was when they were camping out in Ben’s sister’s house, the true potential from homeschooling was shown in the youngest as he explained to his cousins about the Bill of Rights in his own words leaving them flabbergasted and annoyed at the same time. The ending was happy but the very last scene was dragging just by a bit. I would really suggest watching it.