There are lots of good little details in Captain Fantastic, since everything develops the backstories and themes. Ann Hornaday mentions one I also like - the discussion with the young daughter who says Lolita is "interesting" and gets called to task by Ben for using a "non-word" and insists she explain further. Amusingly at the dinner with the brother's kids Ben's little girl doesn't know what Addidas is and assumes "Nike" refers to the Greek goddess of victory, and when the girl Bo meets asks him what music he likes he says "classical, mostly Bach, and mostly the Goldberg Variations in Glenn Gould's performance, and the solo cello suites played by Yo Yo Ma." It's also true of course that Ben is ultimately portrayed as "every bit as unyielding and controlling as the corporations and politicians he righteously inveighs against." The film is a classic critique of all utopias. It's more than just this, but it's a tremendous relief from things like The Nice Guys, Independence Day, or Purge.

Matt Ross apparently lives in the Bay Area, so he came after the screening at Kabuki Sundance for a Q&A. A very lively, appealing, down-to-earth fellow, who said first of all this movie grew out of his own experiences as a questing parent, but at length explained also that he spent some of his childhood living on communes with his mother in the Eighties. In his interview with Terry Gross for NPR there's more detail, living in a teepee, very far out in the forest, wishing he could associate with other kids. They slaughtered goats; and the film makes awareness of meat food source clearer than most. On the other hand, young Matt might have been more sophisticatd than Ben's kids, because he'd lived in Africa and England in urban locations.