Leave No Trace

Soon after Lazzaro Felice comes another film, at the end of which I had the desire to escape into the wilderness and spend the rest of my life among wolves. Although these films are fundamentally different, Leave No Trace is, for example, far more intuitive, as events simply follow one another in a time-lapse documentary without being exposed in advance (conversely, the entire first half of Lazzaro Felice is preparation for the second half), the plot flows freely and undramatically, we are not made aware of some essential information, the narrative does not come back to many of the characters and situations (for example, the only thing that we learn about the mother is that she liked the colour yellow). The protagonists have to overcome obstacles mainly in order to get to know each other and themselves better, rather than to achieve a particular objective. Upon closer viewing, it is possible to uncover in Leave No Trace, like in Lazzaro Felice, a web of motifs connected with the theme of man’s relationship to his own nature. Both pictures turn our attention (back) to nature (and to that which is generally good and unspoiled), or rather it compels us to think about man’s relationship to nature. I think these films are more successful in this regard than are “pure” nature documentaries, to which it is more difficult to connect emotionally due to the absence of a human element. In Leave No Trace, this is aided by the fact that the film does not contain a single negative character. It is purely a clash between the system (towards which Granik is not explicitly critical) and people who want (need) to live outside of it. We understand their situation, but we are not didactically guided to accept the opinion that Walden’s way of existence is the only correct way. In a similarly ambivalent manner, the film addresses the issue of freedom. Though civilisation establishes binding norms (connected here with Christmas trees, which must all look perfect) and tries to somehow categorise everyone (as Tom places shirts in drawers in a new house), but the main female protagonist is in the forests under the ceaseless patronage of her father and cannot rely on basic life security. For better or worse, they are reminiscent of a pair of seahorses, brought to mind by a girl's pendant or an orange peel reminiscent of that animal, which mates for life and whose offspring develop in the abdominal sack of the male, rather than that of the female. Giving someone freedom can be the greatest expression of love. Though the film raises the visibility of certain issues through its story, it leaves it to us to decide what is better. Will provides similar freedom in raising his daughter. He does not lead her to accept a single dogmatic worldview (he responds with a smile rather than disapprovingly to her remark that God created frogs, as she had read in a leaflet distributed by the local Christian community), but he stimulates her curiosity. Thanks to this freedom that the film gives us, the opinion at which we arrive has even greater weight. Leave No Trace thus continues to reverberate after the disarming, maximally simple penultimate scene. 85% (14/07/2018) (less) (more)