LEAVE NO TRACE: Debra Granik’s Comeback Is Essential Viewing

Many people fantasise about moving “off the grid”, escaping the hassle of everyday society by leaving it far behind and uprooting themselves to the most remote locations in the Western World. In an era defined by financial anxieties and harsh political divides, the urgent need to get away from the problems defining our lives has never felt more urgent – and to a certain extent, romantic.

Leave No Trace takes us deep into a far-reaching woodland wilderness, just outside Portland, Oregon, where a father and his teenage daughter are attempting to live, away from the prying eyes of the world outside. It’s a living situation a lesser filmmaker would automatically condemn, by characterising the father in a less than flattering light or by heightening any danger associated with this way of living. But this isn’t a film from a lesser filmmaker.

An “off the grid” character study, devoid of sensationalising

Debra Granik’s first fiction feature for eight years manages to articulate the emotional struggles that are inherent with this way of life, without ever making it unfathomable as to why anybody would find this lifestyle desirable. She is arguably cinema’s foremost chronicler of a “forgotten America”, albeit stripped of the overt political polemic associated with that  now-loaded term; Granik grew up in a wealthy family, but possesses an inherent humanism that repeatedly draws her back to characters who lead significantly less fortunate lives than herself.

Her return proves that she is one of the social realist filmmakers most urgently needed in cinema right now. Her films couldn’t be described as mere “poverty porn”, never allowing us to dwell on the financial problems that our society would define her characters as having, finding more complicated struggles within her characters that American cinema largely shies away from tackling.

The father/daughter unit here are Will and Tom, played by Ben Foster and Thomasin McKenzie. Although they frequently move between different secluded locations, and occasionally venture to the real world for certain supplies, they are pretty comfortable with their living arrangements. One day, Tom is spotted by a jogger in the woodland park, who calls the authorities – and both Will and Tom are taken in by social services who wish to make new living arrangements, despite the fact living in the wild hasn’t taken any noticeable emotional restraint on either of their lives.

The social services don’t wish to interfere with their way of life, but also have a duty to make sure they acclimatise to society, which results in them being moved to a quaint farming community – which dramatically alters the nature of the father/daughter relationship.

Working with her regular screenwriting collaborator Anne Rosellini, Granik refrains from offering a simplistic, less informed depiction of this way of life. It helps that the pair have adapted the screenplay from a novel (Peter Rock’s My Abandonment), but the tiniest details into the central characters’ lives feel intensely researched nonetheless, and shown with a subtlety that makes the quirks of this lifestyle feel lived-in.

Granik delicately envelops the audience in this lushly detailed world, initially depicting the daily lives of Will and Tom with an unhurried tactility; slowly setting up a believable daily routine that provides the context we need, but without forcing it into a more obvious storytelling mould. Marrying a realist restraint with scene-setting for the drama that later unfolds is a difficult narrative balance, that Granik manages seemingly effortlessly.

Two of the year’s finest performances

The setting in the Pacific Northwest will likely invite comparisons to Kelly Reichardt, although there isn’t much depth to this argument; Granik is far more fond of conventional narrative structures, and can balance her low-key depictions of lives rarely seen in cinema with quietly heartbreaking masterclasses in storytelling. The emotional power, of course, is also largely due to her strength in casting.

With Winter’s Bone, she introduced the world to Jennifer Lawrence, who gave a brooding and silently devastating performance that she’s never been able to match in terms of pure emotional restraint. Here, she coaxes one of the finest performances in recent memory out of young New Zealand actress Thomasin McKenzie – a theoretically difficult character to accurately portray, due to being equal parts audience cypher (happy with her lifestyle, but increasingly aware of its consequences), and equal parts emotionally detached from our reality.

All of Leave No Trace’s pre-release discussion has centred on Ben Foster, a beloved character actor finally being given a lead role, and in the long awaited new film by a beloved American auteur, no less. But as great as Foster’s work here is, it wouldn’t be as impactful if he was working against a lesser actor than McKenzie – the increasing complexities of the father/daughter relationship need a performer with the slightest glimmer of childlike innocence to perfectly articulate them, as Foster becomes increasingly closed-off as the story continues. Their trajectories go as far in opposite directions as is possible for characters on the same page with regards to their living situation.

It makes the inevitable destination of the story all the more harrowing, as (to put it in the vaguest terms possible) even the strongest paternal bond is powerless against the realities of this unworkable living arrangement. If it weren’t so rife with spoilers, this climactic sequence would be used as the Oscars clip for both actors. It’s a powerhouse of conveying an entire film’s worth of emotion within one perfectly underplayed moment.

Leave No Trace: Conclusion

Eight years after Winter’s Bone, and Leave No Trace has proven to be more than worth the wait. This is a delicate, heartfelt character drama built around two of the best performances you are likely to see all year – and will leave you hoping that it doesn’t take as long for Granik’s next film to enter production.

Leave No Trace is released in the UK and US on June 29. All international release dates are here.