“Captain Fantastic,” December 30, 2016 (2016), DVD, New York. Radical polymath Ben Cash (Viggo Mortensen) and his wife Leslie, have taken their family, which soon numbers six kids, into the wilds of Washington state to raise them in a program that challenges all their physical and mental properties. They are producing amazingly advanced kids who combine survivalist skills with acute knowledge of, and analytical skills in, philosophy, math, science and literature. Rigor, rigor, rigor prevails in this woodland home school, although they have no social skills or knowledge of how to relate to outsiders. All this faces a new challenge when Leslie’s bipolar disorder leads to a huge crisis and the family must travel into the world that includes facing Leslie’s family and the consumerism that is our culture. What’s not to like about a film that has a family celebrate Noam Chomsky’s birthday (by the way, it’s December 7) instead of Christmas with song and gifts?. It probes the banalities and oppression of our culture and the limits of isolating oneself from it. It is a very good, moving and occasionally very funny film that bombed completely in the theaters. According to IMDB it earned a mere 50k in its first weekend release. Sure there are simplifications. It’s all a bit too Peter Panish for my tastes. Given the amazingly rigorous lives and the risks and illnesses they confront from earliest childhood, this could not be the only time Ben had to acknowledge the often extreme and gratuitous risks he was inflicting on his kids. Are we to assume that all have perfect health because they are isolated?. Are they, truly, all born with perfect teeth that require no braces?. Whence cometh such perfection?. Are we to assume no one ever ate the wrong mushroom or broke a leg?. How does one even understand context in literature or politics if one has no context within which to understand them?. Still, it is a really fun film that also stars Frank Langella as a major heavy. It was a pleasure to watch as we range closer to the edge.