Father-daughter bond unforgettable
Boston-born Ben Foster, who has given life to any number of bug-eyed psychopaths on the screen, gives the performance of his career as a combat veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder in “Leave No Trace,” thanks in no small part to his younger Kiwi co-star, Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie, who plays his daughter.
Foster is Will, a former soldier who has chosen to live off the grid by hiding in the forest in Portland, Ore., with his 13-year-old daughter, Tom (McKenzie). In opening scenes, Will and Tom make their home in a small campsite. Together they forage, harvest greens and mushrooms, sharing meager meals. Will starts fires with flint and moss and hoards matches. He and his daughter rehearse where to run and hide if they are spotted. Once in a while they will shop in a supermarket as a treat.
But when a tourist spies Tom alone in the woods, the park rangers show up, round up Will and Tom and separate them. Foster’s Will is both severely damaged and perhaps the greatest dad ever, who lives to teach his daughter everything he knows about living in the wild and to protect her from harm. For her part, McKenzie must persuade us that while Tom loves her dad, adolescence has made her curious about life outside. Tom needs more than living in solitude with Will, although she is torn because she wants to protect him. It is a compelling metaphor for all father-daughter relationships.
The first feature film from Cambridge-born filmmaker Debra Granik since “Winter’s Bone,” the Ozarks-set drama that catapulted Jennifer Lawrence to an Academy Award nomination at age 20, “Leave No Trace,” which is based on a novel by Peter Rock and adapted by Granik and co-writer Anne Rosellini (“Winter’s Bone”), is another deeply felt backwoods drama about a father and daughter (the father in “Winter’s Bone” is missing, but a presence).
After a separation, Will and Tom are reunited and given living quarters and a case worker (Dana Millican) to keep an eye on them. Will gets a job on a “Christmas tree farm.” He is a good, if non-verbal, worker. But he cannot accept a life in society. Eventually, he and Tom flee, again, and find refuge at a trailer park, where several misfit families live.
The great Dale Dickey (“Hell or High Water,” “Winter’s Bone”) becomes Tom’s unofficial trailer park auntie. She lets her and Will stay in a spare trailer and care for a dog. Like the charming current release “Hearts Beat Loud,” “Leave No Trace” is an unusual and unusually powerful portrait of a father-daughter bond that, in spite of all obstacles placed before it, prevails and grows deeper and more complex with time.