Leave No Trace

Will and Tom live off-the-grid in a forest outside Portland, Oregon. Or you could say they are camping or you could say they are homeless. Will is a war veteran who is either not keen on being around people or prefers living indoors (or both), which puts him offside with "the authorities". Tom is his "home" schooled teenage daughter. Their idyllic lifestyle is upset when the park rangers and police arrive and they get processed by the "System". The Oregan Social Services are a benign, thoughtful and considerate outfit (WINZ could learn a thing or two), but despite their efforts, it doesn't work out and the two are soon on the move again. They run into an endless series of helpful people, which make Will's reactions increasingly difficult to sympathise with.

Apart from the strong hint that helicopter noise is a trigger to send Will to his dark place, we don't learn anything about his or their backstory. The story tends to focus more on Tom than Will, showing both her love, devotion to her father and her adaptability to both their current lifestyle and to the alternatives on offer. Tom is also growing up and becoming less dependant on Will. A cynic might say that Tom is the idealised teenage girl: beautiful, well behaved, passive most of the time, resourceful, thoughtful, caring, hardworking, eloquent when necessary, not the least bit selfish and with no sign of a cellphone.

Leave No Trace tries to take no sides between people on the edge of society and modern society itself. It also shows that those at the edge of society are there for different reasons, do it in different ways and don't always get on with each other. It is also a feel-good story, which like a fairy tale, takes us a little beyond the edge of darkness but brings us safely back. As Wikipedia is keen to point out, it has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Captain Fantastic covered a similar situation in 2016, but concentrated more on the contrast between the backwoods lifestyle and modern American life and played it more for laughs.

Don't think too carefully about how Will manages to keep his crewcut looking so fresh while living outdoors.

🎥

Ian's rating 4/5, Anne's rating 4/5