Based loosely on a true story, Leave No Trace was initially adapted from the novel My Abandonment by Peter Rock, a quietly gut-wrenching tale of a veteran father, Will (Ben Foster), suffering from PTSD, and his young daughter, Tom (Thomasin McKenzie), who live alone in the wilderness of Forest Park in Portland, Oregon. When they are discovered by the police, they are moved around the region, in search of a new, permanent place to be from. A native to the area, I’ve heard rumors that the tire swing the father built for his daughter still exists, now overtaken with moss and far off the trails, but I’ve never seen it.
Leave No Trace requires patience, but it is accompanied by a beautiful, emotional payoff if you sit with and examine the solitude of Will and Tom’s life. They initially live undisturbed, growing their own food and sleeping in a tent, living off of survival skills and the occasional trip to the city library. But after a jogger spots their dwelling and alerts the police, Will and Tom’s quiet existence is suddenly thrust into the city and its devices, rehousing them and rewiring their livelihoods entirely. The film wrestles with this blood versus water dynamic, powerful in its silences, the gaps in understanding that plague familial love. Director Debra Granik crafts their narrative with empathy for the characters and their world, creating a film rich in personal complexity and glimmering with old growth beauty.
My love for Leave No Trace was initially due to my personal ties – being from Portland and spending summer after summer hiking around Forest Park with my dad made the film feel tailor-made for me. I yearn to rewatch it every time I am imbued with even just an inch of homesickness. But beyond my subconscious Oregonian bias, I still believe Leave No Trace to be a brilliant example of slow cinema, however that genre can exist in the American film scene. Granik’s direction treats the story of Tom and Will with such grace and care, creating a delicate and essentially slow film that cares for its environment just as much as it does its characters – the title Leave No Trace is also known as a slogan for environmental conservation, while hiking or otherwise exploring wilderness.
Despite not being about romantic love, Leave No Trace still deserves a spot in the canon of circumstantial heartbreak, of inescapable tragedy and loss. It is a profound search for solace, for community and family, that is as honest as it is loving. Leave No Trace is truly one of the most underrated films of the 2010s, a brilliant and fascinating familial drama and a study of not just a father and a daughter, but of the world they live in, a lush and quiet Pacific Northwest wonderland.
Leave No Trace
2018
dir. Debra Granik
109 min.
Screens Thursday, 3/28, 7:15 @ Coolidge Corner Theatre
Followed by a post-film discussion with director Debra Granik, moderated by Tammy Dudman, Chair of MassArt’s film/video department
Part of the Coolidge’s continuing retrospective of the films of Debra Granik
