Leave No Trace

2018 drama

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A father and daughter living off the grid in the woods run into trouble when they are spotted.

Dang it! More bad chess. This time, the board is set up wrong. You can't convince me that this father is doing a good job taking care of his daughter when he can't even set up a chess board in the right way. Maybe that's the point since I'm not sure we're supposed to think Ben Foster's father character is doing a good job taking care of his daughter. There's ambiguity there. She's provided for, and she's safe until outside forces have intervened. And she's learning how to read and place chess with the board set up incorrectly. At the same time, she's given no chance to develop a social or interpersonal intelligence, learning how to be a bee, if you will.

Both performances at the heart of this movie are good enough to give this movie some, well, heart. Foster's quiet for the most part, and the wounds that have made the character end up the way he is are mostly kept inside. The screenplay only makes suggestions about what's happened to this combat veteran. Thomasin McKenzie delivers most of her lines in this awkward staccato, but she has expressive eyes that show this unspoken longing for things the character isn't even aware of. I also really enjoyed the fringe characters in this--the veterans that they interact with; Dana Millican, who plays a social worker; Isaiah Stone, who's only been in one other movie that isn't a Debra Granik movie; some musicians at a hippie trailer park, including one played by Michael Hurley (wait, THAT Michael Hurley?); Dale Dickey at that same trailer park; a truck driver played by stuntman Art Hickman. Most of those characters are just named after the performers. Dale is Dale. Isaiah is Isaiah. Even Thomasin McKenzie is a girl named Tom. I think that's pretty lazy on Debra Granik's part. She didn't want to make up her own names?

This is Granik's first movie since Winter's Bone. The two have some things in common. You've got the young female protagonist, of course, but there's also this great sense of place. Granik is great at telling these stories about characters on society's outskirts. As cliched as it sounds, the locations where Granik is filming here are nearly as important as the characters. The first woodsy domicile for these characters has a warmth and beauty; later, however, the woods and trees take on a more menacing quality, and that's shown visually with the color and natural light. You almost don't want to give the cinematography too much credit here because I'm pretty sure I could go to these locations with an iPhone and get shots that are beautiful by randomly pointing and clicking. But you have to credit Granik with finding these perfect little locations.

One highlight is some interpretative dancers at a church. They reminded me of one Michael P. Vigilante III, a reference that exactly one person reading this will understand and appreciate.

Seeing this again could very well cause me to sour on it a bit. Symbolism with bees and seashores seemed a little forced, although one of those scenes with the bees really was very touching. But I like seeing trees on the big screen.