Review of Captain Fantastic (2016) by Parqer — 24 Jan 2022

That movie doesn’t work. It was based on a good idea, but it is written so poorly it ruins the whole movie. They are so bad at exploiting ideas. One of the main ideas is the critic of modern society. We get it but do they have to push this narrative so hard? With kids talking like literary students, with the cardio of athletes who like to do extreme mountain climbing as a family activity. And of course they have to throw every Marxist clichés in the book, it doesn’t fit the narrative. If only Viggo’s character was Nietzschian, it would have made sense. A Nietzschian father trying to raise his child to become superhuman. Then they could have played with the idea of when is it okay to follow an ideology and when is dangerous.

Instead they throw some Marxist clichés who don’t really make sense in this context. Every time they could have done something interesting, they close the door. Like in the restaurant scene, when the young children’s ask about pancake and cola. It would have been a great opportunity to have a scene where the father is confronted by his children who realized that this is good food and that their father might not be right. Instead they finish that scene abruptly and go with the hunting scene that make absolutely no sense.