Leave No Trace

I appreciate that if you were to deconstruct my blogs into frequency words then Mark Kermode would come out a lot. Well, this article is no different as I’m mentioning the great man again. Just over a month ago he reviewed Leave No Trace, a film he labelled ‘his favourite of the year.’ At the end of his eulogising, he said he saw no reason why it wouldn’t feature high on his end of year list as well.

Obviously his rhapsody piqued my interest, but so too did hearing the filmmaker’s name. Director Debra Granik was behind 2010’s Winter’s Bone, a feature that propelled twenty-year old Jennifer Lawrence into Oscar contention. Set in the Ozarks of rural Missouri, Granik’s film centred on a young woman forced to grow up prematurely. The mother is unwell; the father absconded, addiction the root cause; the eldest child must therefore become both and assume responsibility for her younger siblings. The older sibling fighting to keep her family afloat clearly prefigures Katniss Everdeen, the role that would make Lawrence famous. 

The film that made people sit up and take notice.

Leave No Trace follows a similar template in that it’s set in an environment that’s often overlooked in cinema, encompassing lives frequently undocumented. Thematically, it continues on from Granik’s 2014 documentary Stray Dogs, which looked at the psychological impact of war on veterans. Given it’s an independent picture, there weren’t many showings in my local world of cine, as a result I asked The Girl if she would take me to Berkhamsted’s Art Deco picturehouse The Rex for my birthday.

Based on Peter Rock’s novel My Abandonment, the film tells the story of a teenage girl, Tom, and her father, Will, living in a forest park just outside Portland, Oregon. From the beginning it’s clear that the two work in symbiosis. When it's required, theirs is a wordless relationship: tasks are assigned with a glance, love signalled with a chirp, obstacles overcome without direction. Characteristically, they are more like animals, building their nest, protecting their own, disinterested in man-made concerns. Why they are living this way becomes apparent when the pair makes a rare venture into the city for supplies. To afford the basic provisions they need, Will sells his PTSD medication to other afflicted Vets.

Thomasin Mackenzie and Ben Foster are incredible in Leave No Trace.

In an interesting sequence, a hurtling rain makes it impossible for Will to light a cooking fire. His daughter responds by turning to their gas canister for heat. Will isn’t happy about this, but in a rare act of rebellion Tom goes ahead. On a practical level you could see this scene about preservation: Will as a father may be aware that resources are scarce, that they should only be used in an emergency. However, it also seems indicative of Will’s desire to be self-sufficient and avoid consumer products. Indeed their life isn’t touched by corporatism, being as it’s the campfire life of early settlers. Tom enjoys playing chess with her father, and Will derives pleasure from nighttime reading – their world is physical and collaborative, deliberately isolated from the digital self-centredness existing a few miles away. Unfortunately for Will his guerrilla outpost isn’t fortified from invaders. Soon the two have been found with difficult questions asked around Will’s fitness to father: How can you care properly for a child in an environment open to the elements? Should a teenager be sleeping next to their parent, albeit in a tent? For father and daughter, the questions are absurd: they’re living away from institutional wisdom, meaning societal rules shouldn’t apply. For the authorities, Will's method of parenting is illegal, a threat to his daughter's health.

The moment where Will and Tom is found could have lapsed into broad stroke Us v Them cliche. What’s special about this film is that it sympathises with everyone’s position. If you were a social worker wouldn’t you want a child to have a roof over their head, a desk at school, a fire in the hearth? Comparable movies Captain Fantastic and Hunt for the Wilderpeople deal with similar stories: people living off grid at war with bureaucratic suits - what these films don’t do is let the audience decide for themselves. In these pictures the protagonists and antagonists are clear, whereas in Leave No Trace we ask questions of our heroes. If it wasn’t for the opening twenty minutes where we see the closeness and happiness of father-daughter, we would feel that Will is irresponsible, living out a hermit fantasy to the detriment of his girl’s socialisation.

Both cracking films.

Having to adapt to their new world is fascinating. Granik documents how the forces of media, religion and education threaten Will’s desire for a child that can think freely. The question of why he’s so opposed to institutions must stem from what America’s machinery has done to him. The education that he was given did not teach him to question his nation's foreign policy; the religion he accepted taught him that God was an ally in war; the media hugged him off to war and then cold-shouldered when he returned. Although war doesn’t feature in the film, for what it has done to Will it must be considered a great anti-war movie.

Granik’s Leave No Trace is a painful study of how war makes people disappear completely. In carrying out global wars of expansionism and colonialism, returning soldiers ironically make tiny worlds for themselves. Ultimately, these prisons prove impenetrable to love, hope and sense. When you reach the end of the movie and see what happens to Will and Tom, your heart might just break.

Leave No Trace is still on in some cinemas.