MOVIES
Intelligent, understated cinema
In 2010 director Debra Granik made the excellent Ozarks drama Winter’s Bone. That film told a quietly compelling, empathetic and tense story of life on the fringes of America, which introduced the world to the ferocious acting talents of its young star Jennifer Lawrence. Now, eight years later, Granik returns with Leave No Trace, an equally excellent and empathetic portrait of life on the American margins, which is set to make a star of young, unknown actress Thomasin Harcourt Mackenzie. Mackenzie plays Tom, the teenage daughter of war veteran and PTSD sufferer Will (Ben Foster). Will has raised his daughter off the grid and away from the triggering effects of urban life. When we meet the pair, they’re living using only the most basic of necessities, deep in the woods of a public park in Portland, Oregon. Without sensationalising or evangelising, Granik quietly draws us into the daily lives and rhythms of the relationship between Will and Tom. They cook mushrooms using a solar cooker; drink water collected from a tarpaulin erected under the trees; practice escape drills in the case of discovery by park rangers and protect each other during their occasional visits into Portland to obtain supplies. They may be “homeless” but they seem to be content.
When Will and Tom are apprehended by park rangers and processed through the systems of the social services department, their lives swiftly change. This is also where Granik demonstrates her unique ability to subtly convey both sides of a difficult argument — understanding that for Tom, there is much to appreciate about the four walls and convenience provided by the accommodation given to the pair by a pious tree farmer while also being able to make us realise that for Will this is a cage that carries with it the potential for psychological triggering. The tension between Tom and Will’s reactions to the basic comforts of conventional society becomes the driving force of the story from this point on.
When Will decides that it’s time to leave their new, government-approved cage and head north, back into the woods, Tom reluctantly accedes. But when circumstances converge to create a situation in which she must take charge, Will remains obstinate in his determination to be self-sufficient in the face of the undeniable kindness of strangers.
Experiencing for the first time the benefits of communal living, in a sincere but gently accepting environment of trailer-park dwellers in the woods of Washington, Tom inevitably begins to question her relationship with her father, and so Granik gently leads us to a heart-breaking, honest and necessary confrontation. The film is not only about the split between the modern, technology dependent norms of modern life and reliance on nature, but also, and perhaps more compellingly, about the moment in which children and parents are forced to confront the gap that exists between their views of existence. The point is poignantly conveyed by the enviable naturalness and almost documentary-like performance of Mackenzie, who manages to convey with a mere shrug or flicker of her eyes so much that’s very real and present and relatable.
Jennifer Lawrence managed to waste most of the talent she displayed in Granik’s previous film by buying into the blockbuster allure of Hollywood. Hopefully Mackenzie will learn from her predecessor’s mistakes and manage to forge a career that, like her director, shows the potential for careful observation and reaction to portray characters that have something profound to say about the gaps between the 1% and the 99% in America, and by extension the world today. Leave No Trace is on one hand an indictment of a system that’s seen it take eight years for Granik to follow up, but on the other, a reminder of the power of intelligent, understated, considered and well-performed cinema to make us think about ideas that are far more layered than they may seem at first glance. LS
TOM INEVITABLY BEGINS TO QUESTION HER RELATIONSHIP WITH HER FATHER
Leave No Trace is currently in cinemas.