captain fantastic

• Captain Fantastic


  2016 film directed by Ross, USA
• Component 1: Varieties of Film & Film-Making (AL)
• Component 1: American Film (AS)
• Core Study Areas


  • Key Elements of Film Form
  • Meaning & Response
  • The Contexts of Film
• Specialist Study Area


  • Spectatorship
  • Ideology (AL)
• Critical Acclaim: Ross won best director at the Cannes Film Festival and the film was chosen by the National Board of Review as one of the top ten independent films of 2016
• Useful Sequences and timings/links

  • Opening Scene (0:00 - 04:36)
  • Dinner Scene (44:08 -49:36)
• Cinematography


  • Opening shots, extreme long shots of long duration to establish and romanticise the natural world
  • Framing of Ben in the rear view mirror in close up is repeated throughout the film establishing that he is in some ways isolated even from his family
  • Contrast between wide shot of open landscape as Steve the bus recedes and the big close up of Ben 'alone' clearly expressing distress for the first time in the narrative
• Mise-en-Scène


  • Hair as symbolic – Ben shaves his beard and Bo, his head, to mark lifestyle changes and transitions in identity
  • Costumes of the family suggest they are out of touch with the modern world
  • Lighting in the basketball court scene where Bo and Rellian discuss Ben is very harsh and contrasts with the naturalistic lighting in most of the film
• Editing


  • The film is bookended with scenes highlighting the rite of passage narrative and foregrounding Bo becoming a man
  • Matt Ross was keen to avoid conspicuous editing
  • Ben's hallucinations of Leslie break from the editing techniques used in the rest of the film
• Sound


  • Diegetic music used to symbolise Rellian's rebellion and assertion of individuality
  • Playing bagpipe music on the bus suggests they are an army going into battle
  • The train sounds used when Bo looks through his university acceptance letters suggest impending conflict and provoke a sense of anxiety in the spectator