Leave No Trace

A valiant soldier unable to adjust to civilian life.

Versatile and self-sufficient, he (Ben Foster as Will) makes a rustic home for his small family in a National Park.

His daughter (Thomasin McKenzie as Tom) is helpful and reliable and enjoys the alternative lifestyle her and her father are living.

But since their dwelling is technically illegal, after they're eventually discovered they have to abruptly adapt and make peace with the outside world, fortunately continuing to live together as one.

They're treated quite well, even provided with a home in the countryside plus ample work and schooling.

But the adjustment is still too much for Tom's father, and the sleeping and waking nightmares continue to destructively haunt him, and even though Tom likes living with others, one day they suddenly pack everything up and head back to the isolated wild.

A psychological tragedy.

Brought about by a lack of care.

Debra Granik's Leave No Trace presents a loving family striving to independently get by.

Their circumstances would be less extreme had more time and funding been available to assist Will after he returned home.

I find it's the people who promote and agitate wars who should be held to account after they're over, not the soldiers who fight them, many of whom likely believe the lies war mongering politicians tell them, and therefore shouldn't be condescendingly criticized in public themselves.

Unless they treated local populations savagely.

As many other people have written, stated, theorized, noted, the people who start the wars and sell the weapons to keep them going don't fight in them themselves, and take home profits that make Shangri-La look destitute.

Even if their own country's public debt skyrockets meanwhile (since their wealth is accumulated privately it's of no concern to them).

And they ask poor people to fight in their wars and those brave self-sacrificing people do fight in their wars, but after the war is finished and they've suffered extreme trauma that nothing can prepare anyone for, they're left to fend for themselves with a prescription for pills and the odd hour long chat, while the war mongers bank multi-millions, a scant fraction of which they spend helping those who earned them their profits recover.

Fighting in a war isn't a typical job, and those that do after mad fools start them deserve adequate care and compensation upon returning home.

No matter how long it takes.

A retreat in the countryside with no work and ample comfort for years on end perhaps.

Will walking into the forest on his own after leaving his daughter behind in a welcoming community should be a wake-up call for the civilian public service tasked with helping men and women like him rediscover peace of mind.

Or, more suitably, for politicians tasked with supplying such organizations with the necessary funds to do so, enormous amounts of public money spent on starting and fighting ludicrous wars, not enough spent helping honest veterans become contributing citizens after they've made unimaginable sacrifices.

Or, even more suitably, just ending gun violence permanently.

By making it much much much much much much much much harder to access a gun.

As Toronto's mayor John Tory suggested recently.

Or start wars.

A Middle-Eastern EU comes to mind.

That could work.

Winter's Bone

Reminding me of Five Easy Pieces in terms of form, Debra Granik's Winter's Bone envelopes a grizzled resurgent incarcerated aesthetic within a young girl's desperate search for her dad. Ree (Jennifer Lawrence) has been raising her younger brother and sister for some time as her drug-dealing and manufacturing father simply has no interest and her mother has lost her mind. It becomes necessary to find her father who is out on bail after the police inform her that his bond includes their house and land. If he doesn't show up for court, her family loses everything. The people who know where he might be live in a cold violent culture saturated with extremely distinct gender roles and physical consequences for stepping out of line. Ree must enter this world and ask tough questions in order to ensure her family's survival.

Strict, stark, and sharp, Winter's Bone directly interrogates what it means to have consequences. Characters within aren't spending an inordinate amount of time considering options, there's simply a predicament and a potential solution tethered to an unforgiving social scale. Family can be relied upon if and only if this scale is balanced. Inquisitiveness will be tolerated to a point.

Demonstrating resourcefulness, ingenuity, and perseverance, Ree does everything within her power to broker a solution while taking care of her struggling family. The film's uniform statically resilient being is delicately nurtured even if its subject matter is harsh. Presence is effectively cultivated and sustained and agency delegated and retained. Number 3 closely behind The King's Speech and Inception in my pick for the upcoming Best Picture Oscar.

With a cameo from Sheryl Lee.