Film Review: LEAVE NO TRACE

Devoted dad and daughter.

It almost feels wrong to write a review of Leave No Trace, the stunning independent film by director Debra Granik, kind of like laughing at a funeral or eating a pastrami sandwich during Ramadan. The film is so intensely beautiful to look at and simply experience that words can't come close to capturing its meaning, or answer the deep questions about how we should spend our lives here in this paradise called Earth.

The story, adapted from a book that was based on a newspaper article about something that really  happened, concerns a sad ex-Marine with PTSD (Ben Foster) and his teenage daughter Tom (Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie), both deserving an Oscar for their amazingly authentic performances. Years ago they abandoned society to live, hidden, in a densely wooded park on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon, making weekly trips into the city for supplies bought with government disability checks.

They've created a sophisticated camp where they cook their meals and sleep huddled together in a tent, barely visible to the naked eye. Dad home-schools Tom and teaches her survival skills, and so she's smarter than others her age. Of course what they're doing is deemed illegal by our society, and one day their idyllic life is abruptly ended by the harsh barks of a police dog and torn apart by a whole mess of park rangers.

The devoted pair is separated and questioned by the authorities, who we instantly dislike even though they are doing good work. After all, if the homeless suddenly could populate our national parks at will, soon enough they'd be covered in trash, the forests depleted for firewood and the animals killed for dinner. Leave No Trace highlights the plight of all those "nutty" people who refuse to fritter away their lives staring at computers or talking on cell phones, watching TV or shopping at the mall, driving in traffic to cubbyholes where they'll push papers and figure out how to make more money to spend on their measly weekends, holidays and allotted vacations. Underneath it all is the question we each must answer: Who are the misfits -- the people who live off the grid or the rest of us?

Dad and daughter are reunited and, through the vast web of social services, given a place to live and work to do, but it's not to last long. The lure of the woods calls them back, and once again they are hungry, cold and homeless, but somehow able to breathe easier.  Eventually things change in a big way, as they always do, but you'll have to see for yourself and decide if it's for the better or for the worse.