Captain Fantastic

Captain Fantastic

1. Left wing ideology

   • Shared responsibility
     • Scene of butchering the deer in montage like style
       • Significance of Ben passing daughter the rope that the deer is on, then girl hands sister knife
       • Jump cut to 'watering schedule' shows everything is done as equally as possible
   • Anti-capitalism
     • Do not celebrate mainstream holidays
       • Celebrate Noam Chomsky day
         • Philosopher and political activist
     • Stealing from the shopping market shows they're against the social capitalistic constructs

2. Identification

   • Increased in scenes involving hallucinations of Ben's wife
   • Character-audience relationship

3. Dual perspective of life

   • Ben
     • lives off the surroundings (anti-capitalist)
       • Opening scene when they kill and prepare a deer to eat, could be seen as very dangerous for the audience
     • Fails to conform to the rules set buy society
       • Shown when he shop lifts from the supermarket with his kids
     • Suffers loss-wants to move on
       • Shown when he breaks the news to his children in a blunt and shocking way, it does not interfere with their routine the day later
   • Jack
     • Lives the archetypal middle-upper classed lifestyle
       • Lives in a massive house which is shown to be a selfish display of wealth when compared with Ben's house
     • Conforms to social norms
       • Sits in his daughters funeral at the front, wearing appropriate clothing unlike Ben.
     • Suffers loss-wants to grieve
       • He wants his daughter to have a standard funeral as a send off however Ben wants her to be celebrated by those who loved her

4. Mise-en-Scene

   • Symbolism of hair with transition and change of identity
   • Costume: outdated old clothes suggest they're out of touch with society and living in the past
   • Irony in daughter going into A&E being in an artificial environment as a last resort to save her life. Ben is Anti-establishment and institution.

5. Editing

   • Bo becoming a man at the beginning in this rite of passage, slow moving camera paired with faster cuts
   • Conforms to continuity editing from start to finish
     • 'related shots paired together from the same clip puts the audience attention onto something specific, for example the deer at the beginning.
     • Bens hallucinations show editing techniques used:
       • Visual Softness, choral music, lighting effects showing her appear, and fade away.