Actors make their marks
‘Leave No Trace’ stars give brilliant performances
Ben Foster and Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie give brilliant performances in “Leave No Trace,” one of the films reviewed today in the Movies section.
“Leave No Trace” is a beautiful film, heartbreaking in the selfawareness — both existing and burgeoning — of its characters. ❚ And what characters they are — and what performances! Ben Foster and Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie are flat-out great as Will and his 13-year-old daughter, Tom. They live, illegally, a life disconnected from society in a vast public park in Portland, Oregon. ❚ They’re not homeless, exactly. Maybe they could live elsewhere. This is simply where Will, a veteran suffering from PTSD, wants to live, has to live, and of course Tom has no choice but to live with him.
Debra Granik opens her film with scenes showing how they live, with a survivalist’s selfsufficiency. Lighting a fire is practically a religious ceremony. After they eat hard-boiled eggs, Tom gathers and crushes the egg shells and uses the fragments as mulch for their plants.
It’s a happy life, seemingly, but hardly idyllic. Will conducts drills in which they quickly disappear into the woods. Her socks give her away when she hides. It’s no game. Do it well, Will instructs — or warns. Do it well.
Still, his concern and affection for Tom are evident, and vice versa. They’re a team.
It’s surprising, given how deeply off the grid they live, when they walk into town one day. Will goes to the VA hospital. From there he stops by a homeless encampment and sells the medicine he receives at the hospital. Granik is a compassionate filmmaker, passing no judgement on anyone. Everyone is doing what they have to do to survive.
Then one day a slight relaxation in Will and Tom’s near-constant vigilance leads to their capture. They can’t live in the park, and Tom has to go to school. (Will has done a good job teaching her, though. A social worker notes that she’s considerably ahead academically of where most kids her age are.) Will has to take a test, administered by a computer, that consists of more than 400 questions. Don’t answer quickly enough and the computer beeps and moves on. Will isn’t used to the demands or the pace.
Are you a good team player, someone asks him? “I used to be,” Will replies.
At first it seems Will and Tom might be separated, but a sympathetic social worker works out a house in a somewhat remote area. Tom likes it — she gets a bike, makes a friend, rescues a rabbit, does teenage stuff. But Will, who works at a Christmas tree farm, grows restless. He and Tom are playing “their” game, he believes. And he doesn’t want to play it forever.
They discover other disconnected people, other people who want to get away from the regular notions of society but also realize the importance of connection, of community. Tom appreciates this far more than Will can.
What’s so powerful about the story, and Foster and McKenzie’s performances, is how they convey both a genuine love and a growing disconnect with what they want out of life. Will knows that his nomadic, distrusting existence is not the ideal situation for Tom, but he also knows he can’t make himself change it.
Tom’s plight is sadder; she adores her father, but as she grows older she strains at the idea of being constantly on the lookout, and then constantly on the move. She knows her father can’t change, too.
It’s been eight years since Granik’s last film — the brilliant “Winter’s Bone,” which was Jennifer Lawrence’s big break. McKenzie’s performance here is different, but no less accomplished. Foster, meanwhile, excels at a kind of damaged intensity, which certainly fits here. At times his character reminded me of the great Harry Dean Stanton in “Paris, Texas” — when you aren’t feeling sorry for him you want to strangle him. That’s high praise, indeed.