Muddled morality - movie reviews of "Captain Fantastic" and "Suicide Squad"

I saw two very different movies this weekend: one a limited release art-house piece and the other a definitive summer blockbuster. The films don't have much in common, save for one underlying theme: the consequences of our actions.

Captain Fantastic opens with a violent scene of a teenage boy stalking and killing a deer with his bare hands. As the boy stands over the bleeding carcass, the rest of his camouflaged family rises out of the fauna to celebrate his accomplishment. The boy is proud, but his father is even prouder. Thus we are introduced to Ben, father of six and the titular Captain Fantastic as he congratulates his oldest son on his first real kill and smears the boy's face with blood as a badge of honor. 

Viggo Mortensen plays Ben with a quiet and intimidating rigidity. Contrary to what the above scene suggests, this is not a historic tale; Ben and his wife Leslie fled modern civilization when their oldest boy was only 8 and established a new home deep into the forests of the Pacific Northwest. Ben occasionally takes the family bus into town to make phone calls and get supplies, but their six children have grown up hunting and preparing their own food, undergoing rigorous survival training and never tasting the "poison water" that is soda or having their minds "warped" by organized religion. Ben and Leslie's dream was to raise a band of "philosopher kings" who could make up their own minds and be free from the lies of society. But their dream was tainted by Leslie's mental illness and manic/depressive behavior. By the time we meet Ben he has reluctantly allowed her to be taken to a hospital for professional treatment, and after three months away from her family, Leslie takes her own life. 

As Ben tries to make arrangements with Leslie's parents - who blame him for her death and her departure from Christianity - and decides to venture out with his children on a road trip to New Mexico for the funeral, his way of life begins to be threatened. Ben is utterly convinced that what he is doing is the best possible life for his children. And when it comes to book-smarts, his children are incredibly educated. His 9-year-old can recite the Bill of Rights by heart and can debate the gritty details of many economic-political current events. And survival skills? All six kids can identify poisonous plants by sight, prepare wild game without a second thought and run further and faster than most trained athletes. But there is also so much about the world that they don't know. 

Ben thinks that all the rest of that doesn't matter. He thinks the physical hardship that his kids endure is much safer than the mental dangers of the modern world. Even when his father-in-law threatens to report him to child protective services, he will not bend. It is very, very late in the story that Ben must jarringly come to terms with the damage and endangerment that his decisions have caused.

Ben loves his family with incredible ferocity and wants only the best for them. There is some good in what he has created for them, but in his relentless pursuit for perfection he has lost sight of the big picture and is unable to see the damage he has caused. Ben had caught Leslie up in an dream that she was not mentally prepared to handle, and it broke her. The children keep many secrets from their father in fear. Their middle son overheard a depressive episode where Leslie begged Ben to let her leave, and the son has never forgiven his father for refusing. Leslie had also secretly helped her oldest son, Bo, apply and be accepted to the top universities in the nation, but Bo is terrified of what will happen if his father finds out his plans to leave the homestead.

There is not a clear moral theme to be gained from Captain Fantastic. It is rated R for violence, language, and a completely unnecessary scene of male nudity (not that it is ever necessary, but this was purely gratuitous). It's not a film I can easily recommend or say that I learned a lot by watching. There were several instances where Christianity was bashed - Ben passionately scorns all religion (and has taught his children to do the same) - and immoral actions were celebrated. I left the film thinking it could have been a better story had they found peace relying in the strength of a power much bigger than their own logic and reason. But I did appreciate the clear message that nothing created by man can be perfect. This film is a painful, uncomfortable look at the consequences of selfishness. Hard as we may try, the serenity of the wilderness nor the flash of modern technology can solve all of our problems.

Suicide Squad, one of the mostly highly anticipated blockbusters of the summer, received pretty terrible reviews when it opened in early August. The trailers had thrilled with familiar comic book faces, lots of cool action and a killer soundtrack, but critics called it messy, too crowded with characters, badly edited and formulaic. 

I will start off by saying that I am a huge fan of the Marvel cinematic universe (Avengers, Iron Man, Captain America, etc.) but not really as much for the DC universe (Superman, Batman, etc.). I came into this movie not knowing much about the character backstories, which worked perfectly, since the first third of the movie focuses on filling in as much backstory as possible. 

Through several colorful (and yet very dark) backstory montages we meet Deadshot, Harley Quinn, Killer Croc, El Diablo, and more. Each has done very bad things and are facing the consequences, even if they don't think they deserve it. Deadshot loves his daughter but wasn't willing to give up his very lucrative career as an assassin for her. Harley traded in a life of professional psychiatry for the dark underworld run by her abusive lover, the Joker. Killer Croc was treated like an animal because of his outward appearance, so he became one. And Diablo...well, Diablo is the only truly repentant one of the bunch. He was living the high life due to the terrified respect his fiery powers gained him, but lost the only things he truly loved when he let the power control him one too many times. When we meet him, he is willingly in solitary confinement and refuses to use his powers ever again.

While the redemptive qualities of the above cast could easily be counted on one hand, I still didn't get the impression than any of them were quite as reprehensible as government employee Amanda Waller. Waller has tasked herself with protecting the future against another Superman vs. Batman melee, and assembles these villains as a literal suicide mission in the name of citizen protection so that more of her soldiers don't have to die. But her intentions are far from nobly executed. She mows down a roomful of innocent government employees to keep her secrets safe. She manipulates her right-hand man to make sure he will do anything to see her mission through. And she makes vague promises to the Squad that she has absolutely no intention of keeping. 

As with the movie reviewed above, Suicide Squad is far from a morally black-and-white tale. And yet...I found this to be a much more redemptive story than Captain Fantastic. Many of these characters have something they regret and something (or someone) for whom they would truly give up everything. A particularly tragic moment happens when the villain Enchantress (yes, the villains have to fight a villain) casts a spell that gives many of these characters a split-second look at what their hearts really desire. What each of them sees isn't money or fame; it is reunion with family, redemption from sin, or a simple, loving life.

Hollywood tells us to cheer for the bad guys because they are cool and misunderstood. To laugh at their quips and one-liners. But beyond that, and far from celebrating them as heroes, I appreciate that this movie showed that all actions have consequences and redemption is always possible. One character spares the life of a fellow outlaw even though he knows that doing so will cost him his own chance at freedom. Another lays down his own life to save countless others. And when the world has been saved and the Squad must return to prison they accept (for the most part) that their heroic actions were not enough to atone for their past sins, and that they must each still serve their time. 

Suicide Squad is messy and loud and frantic. It's not a great movie plot-wise; one reviewer compared it to a video game: meet your character, pick their outfit and weapon, defeat the boss, repeat. And it's not going to win any morality-tale-of-the-year award or have clips used during a Sunday School lesson. But I enjoyed it more than I anticipated, and appreciated the humanity it brought to some very broken characters; characters that could easily have been as flat as the pages from which they originated.