Captain Fantastic

Ben Cash, played by Viggo Mortensen, is a man who defies societal norms and conventions. He lives deep in the heart of the Pacific Northwest, a self-proclaimed utopia surrounded by the grandeur of the forest, where he raises his six children according to his own unorthodox ideology. He believes in a world untainted by the rules and norms of modern society, a world that is inherently more honest, more authentic, and more genuine. Ben's educational approach is everything but traditional. He makes his children learn bushcraft, plays the drums for his kids at every possible opportunity, reads them Shakespeare's plays aloud, teaches them to tackle, kayak, camp, and forage for food. Music, literature, and physical activities are integral to their daily lives. He's more of a guide, a mentor, than a rules-bound teacher. He forges in his children virtues of resourcefulness, self-reliance, and robust resilience. Ben Cash has specific perceptions of government, corporate worlds, commercialization and electronic dependency, so he eschews participation in nearly all of them. He's a proud anarchist. He expects same from his kids: to live a simple, free, and original life where the rhythm of his household sets the beat of self-sufficiency. These self-instructive and nature-loving environments he so thoroughly provided in wilderness areas may possibly instil this revolutionary spirit within his children. Ben's other family members are deceased. They died six years prior, and he has since focused his life and energy to educate and shape a tribe of his own: children whom the world outside no longer considers normal. His family has adapted as they build walls that allow their lifestyle to grow and for their vision of children to blossom free from conventional human constraints, leading their little community like a cult-like, organic family that emphasizes nature. When Ben's wife's estranged sister and her husband call Ben from the city and confirm his wife Linn's death in a tragic car accident, Ben quickly and firmly makes a decision. The six kids return to the city to escort Linn's bereaved sister, Harper, who is pregnant and with her husband, Lee, having divorced his wife and is recently remarried. Linn died unexpectedly, and the loss has to be faced amongst the group of family that needed so much from their once bound family member, leading to unimagined despair. From the moment they escape the cabin and leave, they feel unwelcome in the space they call home. They encounter a whole new world without the uncorrupted experience of self-discovery. The six eccentric kids and the patriarch of the group, Ben – a man with an idyllic outlook, unencumbered by many mainstream life aspects, cannot cope quickly with certain values to which society gives weight. Upon their arrival, Ben tries to shield his kids from discovering facts about their world which go against their parenting philosophy. They must resist, thus entering a disorienting social landscape full of norms that they increasingly begin to disbelieve. They were raised not as ordinary children of society at all – their life diverged from the conventional ways of our modern lives.