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Leave No Trace

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Summaries

A father and his thirteen-year-old daughter are living an ideal existence in a

vast urban park in Portland, Oregon when a small mistake derails their lives
forever.

Will (Ben Foster) and his teenage daughter, Tom (Thomasin Harcourt
McKenzie), have lived off the grid for years in the forests of Portland, Oregon.
When their idyllic life is shattered, both are put into social services. After
clashing with their new surroundings, Will and Tom set off on a harrowing
journey back to their wild homeland. The film is directed by Debra Granik
from a script adapted by Granik and Anne Rosellini.
—Bleecker Street

After living off the grid in Oregon for years, traumatized military veteran Will
(Ben Foster) and his teenage daughter, Tom (Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie),
are picked up by social services and forced to integrate back into society.
While Tom begins to connect with others and thrive, Will struggles and
attempts to avoid his demons by escaping back into the wild. Directed by
Debra Granik. Based on the novel "My Abandonment" by Peter Rock.
Will, an Iraq War veteran suffering from PTSD, lives with his 13-year-old
daughter, Tom, in a public park outside Portland, Oregon. They live in almost
total isolation, only entering town for occasional food and supplies. Will
makes their money by selling his VA-issued painkillers to other veterans.
After Tom is accidentally spotted in the woods by a jogger, officers arrest
them and place them into social services. They are given food and a house
on a Christmas tree farm in rural Oregon, on the condition that Will abides by
the rules of the home owner and social services. Will begrudgingly begins to
work on the settlement packaging pine trees, while Tom begins school and
interacts with local kids her age in a 4H club. Will feels oppressed by others'
presence and tells Tom they are returning to the woods. She follows
reluctantly.

An emotionally broken veteran and his teen daughter have lived off the grid
for many years on illegal national park land in Oregon and survived well, and
happy. One day, they are found by park police and re-homed. He tries his best
to make it work, taking a job on a Christmas tree farm, trading his labor for
housing, but feels more comfortable working with the animals than the
humans. She wants to stay, she's made a friend, sees what life is like in the
"real" world, and wants to grow and evolve. Freedom calls him, and they
disappear to another state to find peace again until he falls and is barely
alive when found. While he is rehabbing his leg, she has the biggest decision
of her life to make.
—kateann1027

1 more

Synopsis
Will is a veteran with PTSD. Homeless by choice and withdrawn from society,
his life is both comforted and complicated by the fact that he is raising his
daughter as a single dad. When the curtain goes up we find them living in the
woods near Portland, Oregon. His daughter, Tom, is about 14 and doesn't
remember her mom. They tend a small garden, cook mushrooms, and keep
their canvas shelter patched against leaks. Once a month they trek into
Portland to shop for necessaries with Will's disability check. Will teaches her
all the survival skills he knows, including how to bug out and hide so as not
to get "burned" by the park rangers for squatting on public lands.
Nevertheless Tom is seen one day and they soon get burned and turned over
to Social Services. We cringe with Will as he sits down to take the intake
exam, 435 questions to assess his psychological state. He tries but stops
answering when the computer-voiced questions get too close. On the other
hand Tom does well as the lady social worker soon discovers that she not
only reads better than most kids her age but that Will has been a loving and
responsible parent in spite of the circumstances. The social workers reunite
them and place them in a vacant house where Will is expected to work at the
local Christmas Tree farm. We smile as he is instructed on how to prune a
young pine to a perfect point on top to meet the expectations of California
customers. Meanwhile Tom meets an older boy who is framing his own tiny
house. She takes a liking to his pet rabbit as he describes the floor plan of
his trailer-sized home. He invites her to the local 4H club where she learns
some rabbit handling skills. Whether Tom feels any attraction to this nice
young man is totally left up to our imagination. (Happily there are no sexual
encounters anywhere in this film apart from the concern of the various
strangers they meet as to Will's intentions toward Tom.) Tom likes it in their
new home but Will is restless. He says that this is not really our house, our
food, our furnishings, much less our life. You have to cooperate, he explains,
like showing up at church, to keep on their good side. One day he tells Tom to
pack only the stuff she needs and they make a break for it, eventually
hitching a ride with a trucker who drops them off at a logging road up in
Washington State. They spend a freezing night covered in branches and find
a vacant cabin the next morning, where they break in and help themselves to
some canned food. Will leaves Tom in the cabin while he heads downhill to
find a store to get more groceries, but he never makes it. The next morning
Tom finds him injured and unconscious by a stream. She gets help from a
family that is camping nearby where a former Army medic nurses Will back
to health. The family provides them with a trailer to live in for the time being
in their little settlement of old, run down RVs. Tom likes this new found
community of fellow misfits and refugees from civilization and learns some
beekeeping skills from the wife of the medic who tended Will's foot . Tom
helps her fill a rucksack with supplies for someone who lives alone in the
hills as a hermit. Periodically the woman hangs the rucksack from a tree and
comes back later to retrieve the empty bag. Will is determined to leave this
comes back later to retrieve the empty bag. Will is determined to leave this
little community as soon as his foot heals. When the day finally comes and
Tom finds him packing, she confronts him with the realization that whatever
is wrong with him is not wrong with her and that she no longer wants to keep
onContribute
picking up stakesto this page following him to the next camp. Will
and obediently
realizes
Suggest the truthorofadd
an edit what she says,
missing but knows that for himself things will
content
never change. They part ways. We know that Tom will be all right but feel
sorry that Will, aTprisoner
O P G A P of his tortured memories, chooses a hermit's
existence. The curtain comes down as Tom hangs a rucksack from the tree
What is the streaming release date of Leave No Trace (2018) in Australia?
one day, presumably for the hermit father she will always love.
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