Leave No Trace is a film adaptation of a novel, which is inspired by a true story that I am unfamiliar with. It focuses on a veteran father and his teenage daughter who live in the woods and only venture into more densely populated areas to restock supplies or get access to services that they are incapable of performing themselves. It is an extremely sympathetic movie that empathizes with all sides once the outside world discovers them and tries to get them to live a more socially acceptable lifestyle, which the daughter is drawn to, but the father is almost physically incapable of tolerating. How will the pair resolve this tension?
If you are wary of seeing Leave No Trace because you are afraid that the story will depict physical or sexual abuse, please put aside your concerns and see the movie. This movie is perfectly divided into three parts that parallel the stages of child development: the nurturing cocoon and intimacy of a parent child relationship in which there is only a sliver of need that sows a seed of future disagreement, the interruption of this relationship by the outside world that introduces the child to foreign concepts and the resolution in which the child must weigh the world she knows with the world that she does not and decide which parts to keep and which aspects that she wants to discard. In order for a child to become an adult, there must be some level of individuality and distinction from the parent because people should not be photocopies.
Leave No Trace is the kind of movie that you want to see in theaters because there is an elusive quality that will get lost outside of the theater. During home viewing, the stillness and silence will be less apparent. The beauty of nature will be less compelling and majestic. The harmony of the father daughter relationship and their relationship to nature will be less striking so when slight fissures begin to appear, it will be less noticeable. The initial scenes seem Edenic until slivers of dialogue puncture the image with the reality of a practical deficit.
What I loved about Leave No Trace is that there is never a prose dump disguised as dialogue to explain the main characters’ back story to the audience. For instance, I would love to know how the father managed to have a relationship with a woman, what happened to the mother and how long they have lived in the woods, but the movie never tells us, and because the movie feels organic like life, it is completely acceptable and not frustrating. When you meet someone, you don’t usually get a person’s entire life story in one sitting. This movie shows rather than tells.
Leave No Trace starts with the real image of nature then shows how it is disseminated in our world. The middle of the movie shows how pale in comparison images of nature are: the wallpaper and the screen savers at the social services agency. Then when the family reaches a compromise with the state, that compromise does feel like a nightmare as nature is casually destroyed and packaged for human consumption. I am a city girl, but I viscerally understood that the father felt tortured by being in the center of the action, and how even though it was still outside and as close to nature as he could be without drawing the disapprobation of the state, it was an abomination and against everything that he wanted. He was complicit in destroying what he loved, and it was the opposite of what he needed. Side note: that horse was acting excellence and put to shame its more famous antecedents in film and television!
In contrast, Leave No Trace shows how the daughter reconciles the wildness of nature with civilization in her further discovery of nature while interacting with the outside world whether it is with seahorses, bunnies or bees. She recognizes in others the harmony that she and her father had in the woods. It is possible to strike a compromise with society, find community and maintain your uniqueness and independence without sacrificing integrity and diminishing danger. No animal gets harmed during the movie so animal lovers who want to say, “Ahhhhhhhhhhh,” should definitely see this movie for the bunny scenes alone.
I saw Leave No Trace with a college friend who also is an avid churchgoer like me, and we cackled in recognition at the depiction of one aspect of American church life. It is simultaneously welcoming and off-putting, earnest and ridiculous. On one hand, when you are the person that wants to worship God in your own unique way, you welcome any arena that supports your expression, but sometimes it elicits unintended mirth in the one watching it from the outside, even if that person is a fellow believer. If you are familiar with the peace of Christ and the dread of social anxiety strikes at the mere mention of it, then this movie is definitely for you.
Leave No Trace’s strength is that it is not judgmental while showing the deficiencies and benefits offered by all characters. While a bureaucracy may feel inadequate and unfeeling, the people that exist within it are depicted as open to the people whom they provide services to and flexible in their approach to unique situations. They get the absurdity of some of their functions, and while the meaning behind the common language used by both sides is completely different and sometimes seems like an unintended mockery, particularly the concept of independent, there is always the sense that there is a general agreement on the ultimate goal. No one wants to separate the father and daughter from each other, but they do want them to be safe and functional. The problem is what they think that looks like.
Leave No Trace permeates a general tone of gentleness and kindness and a complete lack of danger that is frankly alien to me. There is a uniform demographic that lends to the credibility that there is no need for suspiciousness or questioning of motives. There was a story of a woman who gets pulled over by a cop, who then gives her a hug because she is having a bad day. I’ve received kindness from strangers, but I don’t take it for granted. It is a sigh of relief, not an expectation. I wondered what this film would look like if the veteran and his daughter did not resemble the community surrounding them. Hopefully there would be no change.
It was nice to finally not be suspicious of Ben Foster in a movie, and Thomasin McKenzie’s naturalistic performance anchors the entire movie, which many adult actors with more experience are incapable of doing when they finally get an opportunity to take center stage. If you enjoy quiet and understated movies, then I highly recommend that you check out Leave No Trace, but if this subject matter does not appeal to you, then skip it.