Leave No Trace

Eight years back I was somewhat dumbstruck by a movie called WINTER'S BONE. It was directed and adapted by Debra Granik and others. The story unfolded in the Ozarks of Missouri among the kind of people my great-grandparents had been in the Kentucky hollows. It followed a teenage girl growing up and dealing with brutal adult problems as she searched for her father; it portrayed a community; it launched the career of Jennifer Laurence.

LEAVE NO TRACE is Granik's new film. It's a gentle film, but again it focuses on a father and a teenage girl taking hold of her own life in strange circumstances. Again, community matters in good and bad ways. The film has no exposition, no back story, just the lives being led. What you see happen is all you get, and it is enough. As Anthony Lane noted, this is an anti-war film in which a shot is never fired (I think maybe distantly related to COMING HOME). It's the best film I've seen in some time.