Captain Fantastic and the Problem with Being Right

 

Captain Fantastic is not interested in knowing whether the main character is right. It's more uncomfortable than that. 

Ben (Viggo Mortensen) has a very particular way of raising his children. They live away from society, deep in the woods, hunting their own food, exercising, reading constantly, and learning about everything from philosophy to politics. They are taught to question the world rather than simply accept it.

It is extreme. But it is also fascinating.

Ben's way of parenting isn't entirely wrong

There is a lot about Ben's parenting that I actually admire.

He doesn't talk down to his children. When they ask difficult questions, he tries to answer them honestly. He expects them to think, understand, form opinions, and defend them.

There is something beautiful about that.

I've always believed that children deserve honest answers. Sometimes the answer is complicated. Sometimes it's uncomfortable. And sometimes the most honest answer is simply: “I don't know.”

But even with a philosophy like that, reality gets complicated.

As a parent, I've found situations where giving a completely direct answer isn't as easy as I imagined. Sometimes children aren't ready for the whole truth. Sometimes the truth needs context. Sometimes protecting them for a little while isn't the same as lying to them.

And this is where Captain Fantastic becomes much more interesting than a story about an eccentric father.

Because where is the line between preparing a child for the world and protecting them from it?

He prepares. She protects.

One of my favorite contrasts in the movie is between Ben's children and his sister Harper's (Kathryn Hahn).

They couldn't be more different.

Ben prepares his children. His sister protects hers. Her children are sheltered from difficult subjects and uncomfortable realities. Ben's children, meanwhile, are expected to confront them head-on.

Neither approach is entirely healthy.

Children need protection. But they also need preparation. The world is not always kind, and eventually they have to live in it. We can't remove every bad influence, every disappointment, every dangerous idea or every unpleasant experience from their lives.

At some point, the goal has to become teaching them how to recognize those things and deal with them.

When protection becomes control

The most interesting thing about Ben is that he genuinely loves his children.

His intentions aren't cruel. In fact, they're often the opposite. He wants them to be intelligent. Independent. Strong. Free from conformity. He wants to protect them from what he sees as the ugliness of modern society.

But this is where the movie asks a difficult question:

Can you be so determined to protect your children that you end up hurting them?

Yes. And it can happen in both directions. You can protect children so much that they aren't prepared for reality, or you can push them towards independence so aggressively that you forget they're still children.

The children see what we've stopped seeing

Ben's children look at the world with a kind of brutal clarity. Things that most of us have accepted as normal suddenly look ridiculous when they question them.

And that's something children can do incredibly well.

They haven't yet learned to accept everything simply because “that's how things are.” They ask why.

Why do we behave like this? Why do we celebrate this? Why do people believe that? Why is something considered normal?

Sometimes their questions expose how strange our society actually is.

But there is an irony in Ben's children.

They are taught to question everything — yet their father's worldview is so powerful that they don't always question him.

And that made me wonder whether they are truly independent thinkers, or whether they have simply become extremely intelligent children who think within the boundaries their father created.

That's the uncomfortable part. Ben has taught them to think for themselves while simultaneously giving them a very strong idea of what they should think.

The problem with being right

This is what I think makes Ben such a fascinating character. He's not a stereotypical bad parent. He's not stupid. He's not ignorant. And he's not completely wrong.

In fact, he's right about quite a lot.

Society does have problems. People do blindly follow conventions. Children can be exposed to things they aren't emotionally prepared for. Education should involve more than memorizing information. We should encourage curiosity and critical thinking.

But being right about some things can become dangerous when it convinces us that we must therefore be right about everything.

And parenting is particularly vulnerable to this. We all have beliefs about what our children should eat, learn, watch, read, experience, and become.

We tell ourselves we're doing it for them, but sometimes, we're doing it for ourselves, without even noticing.

Finding the middle ground

By the end of the movie, Ben begins to understand something important.

He doesn't suddenly decide that society is wonderful. He doesn't abandon everything he believes in.

Instead, he starts moving towards something much more difficult: balance.

And I think that's the point. The world isn't simply good or bad. People aren't simply good or bad. Parenting certainly isn't.

We can't completely isolate children from everything we consider harmful. But we also shouldn't throw them into the world without protection. We need to give them roots and then, eventually, give them room to grow beyond us.

Captain Fantastic is funny, uncomfortable, hurtful, and incredibly sweet at the same time. It challenges Ben, but it also challenges us to look at our own certainty.