Will is a former soldier who suffers from PTSD after he returned from Iraq War. He took his young daughter, Tom, and make their small house into an isolated park outside Portland, Oregon. One day, a police officer captures them and then they are forced to participate in social services leaving their great quiet life.
Debra Granik directs with a touch that's as gentle on the audience as bees are to Tom. There is not a move, cut, sound, or deliberate stretch of silence that in some way doesn't advance and inform the plot.
[Thomasin McKenzie] is a massive find. There is such wisdom in her presence...You can feel her seeing everything and taking it all in. There's such a naturalism to the way she responds in every single situation.
Like "Winter's Bone," "Leave No Trace" doesn't unfold with a typical Hollywood-type narrative. Instead of the dramatic highs and lows, it proceeds in a stately, evenly paced manner that smacks of authentic life.
Leave No Trace might be described in social terms as a film about homelessness, but it never loses sight of the fact that what makes a home is the privacy people need to connect with each other.
