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Viggo Mortensen is talkative. People expect him to be the extreme mountain man he plays in the new Cannes favorite Captain Fantastic—mud-splattered, idealistic, good at killing things. Mortensen plays a father of six who raises his kids in isolation in the Pacific Northwest, schooling them in hunting skills, the Bill of Rights and the banjo. When he leads the brood into society for their mother's funeral, the film becomes a quirky and emotional quest that outshines Little Miss Sunshine.
Last month, Mortensen was back in the Northwest to receive an award for outstanding achievement at the Seattle International Film Festival. The star and Fantastic director Matt Ross (Silicon Valley) sat down with WW to talk about "hippie communes," extreme parenting, and how Mortensen became a "summer dad."
WW: Some critics say this role was made for you. Do you think so?
Viggo Mortensen: I've never played someone quite like this. I've played characters in the woods, who've been seen to read a book. I even played a guy driving a bus. Because of the way people have seen me, they have ideas about skills I'm supposed to have and people I'm supposed to have killed. There's this idea that I never wear shoes (I do like going barefoot), that I live in the woods (I did used to), and that I only eat what I kill. That's not quite true. But I've never played a guy with six kids or a thought process like this.
Was it hard to play a guy with such extreme parenting ideals?
Mortensen: He starts out being this Superman in the woods. It doesn't take long and you start to get inklings that he's authoritarian. He's trying so hard to be perfect. There're not enough hours in the day for what he wants the kids to learn, it's ridiculous. I expect that there will be people who have an ideological bent from the get-go who are not going to open up and see that there is no hero. If there's something redeeming in the end, it's that he eventually finds a way to adapt and to admit that he's made mistakes.
How did you prepare? I read that you skinned animals?
Matt Ross: We sent the kids to wilderness survival camp. The two teenage girls butchered a sheep to learn how to skin an animal. George [MacKay] was taking yoga. Everyone was doing rock climbing. Viggo was building the garden and learning the bagpipes. That was all an invitation for them to bond and see Viggo as their dad before the film. They ended up calling him "summer dad." That happens on a lot of movies. If you're a working actor, it's a nomadic lifestyle.
Is this an autobiographical story?
Ross: It's not autobiographical. I lived on hippie communes, but I don't call them communes because it was the '80s, so they weren't '60s communes. They were "alternative living situations." At one point we lived in tepees. But it's more about me having questions when I had kids—what I want to pass on and protect them from. It was a way to ask those questions in the form of a narrative.
This movie is hilarious, but also really sad. How would you explain its comedy?
Mortensen: There are a lot of funny things in the movie, but they come out of the contrast between [the kids] and the people they encounter, or the precociousness of a young kid having certain questions. We're not trying to be funny. The situation might be funny, but we play it real, and that's what makes it funny.
Ross: It's ironic that we refer to sitcoms as "situation comedies," when sitcoms are actually the antithesis of situational. The whole thing is a setup for punch lines. True situational comedy comes out of situations. It's funny that somebody might wear [a onesie and gas mask] to church, but they're just trying to honor their mother.
Critic's Grade: A
See IT: Captain Fantastic is rated R. It opens Friday at Fox Tower.
Willamette Week