When his self-reliant mother dies unexpectedly, Atticus flees deep into the forests surrounding his Catskills home. Wandering the woods in shock, relying on what meager food and shelter he c... Read allWhen his self-reliant mother dies unexpectedly, Atticus flees deep into the forests surrounding his Catskills home. Wandering the woods in shock, relying on what meager food and shelter he comes across, Atticus' grasp on reality begins to fray. His nerves worn thin, Atticus latch... Read allWhen his self-reliant mother dies unexpectedly, Atticus flees deep into the forests surrounding his Catskills home. Wandering the woods in shock, relying on what meager food and shelter he comes across, Atticus' grasp on reality begins to fray. His nerves worn thin, Atticus latches on when he encounters Carter, a scruffy, pot smoking drifter, who lives out of his car ... Read all
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Teasing a theme of The State vs The Individual, the story suffers once untreated diabetes removes mom from the picture, leaving Atticus to fend for himself. Having Atticus meander aimlessly through the forest makes sense given his background, but the story loses all focus at this point. Unfortunately it doesn't really regain traction when Atticus latches on to the free-spirited hippie Carter (Peter Scanavino). Carter becomes a quasi-father figure and big brother, but his endless stream of screw-ups can't be offset by his hand-crafted jewelry. He attempts to sell the goods at hippie festivals seemingly designed for pot smoking and skinny dipping.
With this beautifully photographed film, writer/director Tom Gilroy could have used a bit more attention to the script. The mother-son story easily could have lingered longer, and the Carter-Atticus story needed a bit more direction - more than just making the point that Carter has mostly good intentions. Young Silas Yelich looks really good on screen, but is given little to do, so we aren't sure what to expect with his future work.
With some elements of Mud and Running on Empty, the look and feel of the movie gets us set up for a nice indie treat. Unfortunately, the script lets us down in the second half.
What are the life truths revealed here? A shocking loss and separation from the cocoon of a caring family forces a child to make decisions on his own while leveraging their teachings. Eluding the potential social net captivity leads to a kinder albeit undisciplined friendship with a similar lost soul. The threads of living a life day to day, making do with fundamentals - ones wits, learned abilities and deficits - weave throughout the tale. We learn key morals and truths such as right and wrong, respect and human interaction are all intertwined with a positive attitude and connection to the natural world, not through rigorous dogma or materialism. Touchingly simple yet fine production, message and approach. For me, time well spent.
This film is all about the scattering of this long-fractured spirit, and whether or not there's any hope of a wind strong enough to catch these scatterings and glue them together to rebuild this fractured America.
Carter (Peter Scanavino) was nude because he was naturalistic and uninhibited, he represented the early Americana nude male in a natural landscape Carter appears to have lived off the grid in woodland wilderness for a very long time, possibly a decade or more, people who live like that, especially people born into off-the-grid regions within the Catskills, are living a life of abject poverty with no electricity, sleeping nude and swimming nude are natural, as is outdoor bathing ( Plenty of young people love swimming nude, and plenty of people sleep in the nude, but the film goes beyond that ) Catskills (filming location) = Hudson River School of art = plethora of paintings depicting nude males in natural landscapes (looking at you, Thomas Eakins) Carter laid down in a choreographed manner, modelling his chiselled physique, almost like he stepped out of an Eakins painting Carter at the cliff with the rolling water with the other young men was straight out of "Kindred Spirits" by Asher Brown Durand, young kindred spirits on a cliff spiriting amidst an impenetrable green wilderness backdrop of boundless woodlands and forested mountains Atticus' mother was raising Atticus to mature into that same early Americana naturalist, uninhibited, complete-individual-freedom-and-release frame of mind-and-spirit Carter's nature carted Atticus further towards maturing into that frame of mind-and-spirit
Did you know
- ConnectionsReferences Fatal Games (1989)
Details
- Runtime1 hour 40 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.85 : 1