Review of Leave No Trace (2018) by K Nife C — 06 Sep 2018

If there's one essential quality of America that no one talks enough about, it's that we love to invoke our troops when it's politically convenient, but when it comes to them surviving combat long enough to return home they are swiftly referred to their own Marine-issued boot straps. Conveniently swept under the rug are they the skeletons of our world police headquarter's closet. PTSD, psychosis, drug addiction, and suicide serve as a mental MRE for the overwhelming majority of these veterans, and it probably doesn't help to have to bear the guilt of the fact there hasn't been a moral justification for 99% of US military interventions since WWII. We can all agree that East Asia, South America, and the Middle East have been great plunder for the wealthy elite and their multinational corporations for the good part of the last century, but if you asked the families that have sacrificed, mentally and mortally, their children to fight those ventures I doubt they'd say lower gas prices make up for the void in their hearts.

Sometimes while sitting at your pointless wage-earning life-drain, you may fantasize about just dropping everything and running into the forest. Most of us never do anything with this primal drive to leave the artifice of modern living, or we might go camping on the weekend to get a little taste of it. But there's nothing fulfilling about a weeny roast in an RV park because it isn't really a mortal priority. Will (Ben Foster) and his daughter Tom (Thomasin McKenzie) have managed to keep society at arms length enough to find some solace. More out of necessity for the father, an ex-Marine who has a severe case of rambling, they make do with the scarcity of the forest, and the satisfaction of being able to "think [their] own thoughts". The idea that this is never more overtly explained makes Leave No Trace seem all the more supernatural. Helicopters haunt Will's dreams, and when forced by the state to acclimate to the trappings of even rural society one can immediately sense his fight-or-flight senses being triggered by the simple ubiquity of technology.

American society has always taken the scraps from the table of military technological innovation. From the cathode ray to the microwave to the internet we've rather suddenly bombarded our simian/reptile minds with unnatural light, and all of this innovation has been in an attempt to effectively inflict the most damage and terror possible on ourselves. We commit this crime against humanity well, and I think only someone who knows the theater of modern warfare can fully grasp the horror of its potentiality. But there are also quiet, beautiful places left on this Earth where to take solace. One just has to survive long enough to find them. Much of what is spoken between Will and Tom is pragmatic and stoic, but this simplicity underlies a much deeper emotional context that resonates far beyond their situation. Leave No Trace is a reminder that you don't have to be alone in the torment of this world, but you do have to find a place where you fit.