Despite a couple of moments in the film that I had issues with, overall, I loved Captain Fantastic, a refreshingly transgressive mainstream film that is both thoroughly thought provoking political commentary and just a delight!
Reaching One’s Human Potential
What I love so much about Captain Fantastic (2016, Matt Ross) is that it gives us a kind of imaginary laboratory experiment where we can see how children raised outside of a capitalist/consumerist environment reach their human potential, albeit with some dysfunction mixed in (more on this in a moment). Ben (Viggo Mortensen) not only isolates his children in a natural environment – which, in itself, connects them to nature, giving them a healthy investment in and internalization of how humanity is still very much interconnected with the natural world, something we have lost to our utter detriment – but he also rigorously tunes their energy in (mostly!) enriching directions, keeping their bodies healthy with a natural diet and exercise, while pushing their minds — freed from the addictive, hyper-stimulating consumerism that young people are relentlessly inundated — to elevated heights of knowledge and deep (critical, analytical) thinking, the latter of which is especially lacking in our education system.
A return to not only nature but the natural (reaching one’s) potential for all human beings
Deep (Critical, Analytical) Thinking
I can’t express enough how much I appreciated this element in the film! As an educator who teaches critical, analytical (deep) thinking, I have seen how too many students struggle with what should be a rudimentary cognitive skill established early on in formative years. (I will stress this crucial point over and over and over again, that we need to establish critical thinking in early childhood years, as early as kindergarten!) Most potently, we get an example of this thread in the film when Ben pushes his daughter Kielyr (Samantha Isler) to express her thoughts on the novel Lolita. Kielyr just wants to “read” the book without having to actually think about what she is reading, but Ben pushes her to examine her feelings about the book, and, after a pause — Ross pertinently focusing on her facial reactions thus allowing us to literally see her mentally push herself to think deeper about what she has read so far — Kielyr then conveys a deep thought about this complex book (e.g., in short, for complex reasons, we can hate child rapist Humbert Humbert but we can also sympathize with him), just such a profound moment because it so powerfully reveals how not only can we enrich ourselves by getting more out of a complex text (and thus better understand why important works are important!) but, more profoundly, how such a way of thinking profoundly opens up a better understanding of the human condition in general, which, in turn, makes for a more enlightened, healthy society in general since that means we will engage in the complex world in the necessary complex way that progresses humanity to higher levels of understanding and being.
Pushed to an enlightened understanding of the human condition
Contrasting Two Radically Different Worlds
When Ben is forced to re-enter the capitalist/consumerist world he has escaped we dramatically see the contrast of these two worlds, the capitalist/consumerist world producing human beings literally turned into consumers, living for their consumption of stimulation fixes, whether that be “unreal” food (food loaded with sugar, salt, based on unnatural ingredients) or entertainment fixes (e.g., shopping, video games, etc.) all of which utterly shifts the desires of people from real sources of enrichment and a fulfillment of potentialities to empty, meaningless, purposeless lives devoid of any real motivation towards anything fulfilling human potential. We especially see this enacted when Ben demonstrates how his sister Harper’s two boys have no clue what the “Bill of Rights” is much less why it is so important, to which his eight year old daughter Zaja (Shree Crooks) schools them by first relating the rote definition of the “Bill of Rights” and, then, Ben pressing her for why it is so important, goes on to give us a deeper understanding of its deeper implicative significance. This moment is further compounded by Ross emphasizing how Harper’s two boys are more invested in their video game playing than actually enhancing their minds with knowledge that could actually give them the kind of meaning in their lives that leads to real fulfillment and life affirming purpose.
Entering the all-consuming consumerist world
Zaja’s enlightened self means that she is already well on her way to being an active (purposed) agent in the world
A Dysfunctional Side to Paradise
The downside to Ben’s constructed way of life stems from Ben and his wife Leslie being the sole source of this environment, which means that with the good also comes the dysfunctional aspects of these two well-meaning parents, especially Ben, whose major blind spot seems to be his own patriarchal, phallocentric, hypermasculine way of being where in addition to the life enriching elements he offers his children, he also instills in them his militaristic (strict) philosophy, a regimented control over his kids, creating a kind of militia sensibility, gendering (masculinizing) his son Bo (that opening moment where Ben creates a ritual for Bo to enter manhood is archaic in the extreme!), pushing his kids to a degree that puts them at risk and/or risks alienating them, regimenting (controlling) their day to what seems like an extreme (unhealthy) degree, stressing not only nature oriented survival skills but also troubling anti-capitalist survival skills (e.g., robbing a supermarket!), and, in Ben arrogantly believing that his way of being is the only true way of being, setting up unnecessary conflicts with not only his extended family but also with own kids.
There is No Outside
But, then, I think that this is part of the film’s message, that with this truly dehumanizing capitalist/consumerist system – and the real need by parents to deflect it if not actually attempt to escape it – we see how Ben and Leslie in effect are forced into this measure of protection that can only inevitably lead to the problems that ensue (e.g., if we didn’t have such a dehumanizing, alienating way of life Ben and Leslie wouldn’t have felt forced to try and create their own self-sustaining haven, proving that even in attempting to escape capitalism we can see that there is no real escape). The end of the film has Ben inevitably and necessarily forced to compromise his way of life, e.g., re-entering the capitalist/consumerist world, though on his terms, a way of giving his kids a sense of “normalcy” albeit though now with the constant and relentless pressures that entail with a consumerism that permeates real world lives.
Compromising a way of life: Spatially re-integrated back into a capitalist/consumerist way of being
Kristen Titko 
Reagan