Debra Granik’s father-and-daughter drama is patient, compassionate and deeply affecting, with Thomasin McKenzie and Ben Foster making its small exchanges matter. A few stretches linger too long, but the relationship holds our attention.
Leave No Trace is a tender, absorbing drama, with a little too much patience for its own silences. Debra Granik takes the daily tasks of a father and daughter living off-grid seriously enough for us to understand why their life suits them. She also keeps us alert to the possibility that the daughter might want something else. The screenplay, co-written with Anne Rosellini, allows that difference to become apparent without making either character deliver a position statement.
Thomasin McKenzie plays Tom with a competence that makes the relationship convincing before its difficulties become clear. In the forest routines, she seems accustomed to working alongside Will, played by Ben Foster, and quietly confident of her place there. We were moved by how ordinary their closeness felt. The practised business of living together gives their affection something solid, and her curiosity about other people never looks like a sudden personality change.
Ben Foster keeps Will’s unease close to the surface without turning every exchange into an announcement of distress. His reserve can be difficult to read, but it makes sense for a man whose contact with society is so strained. Debra Granik gives his experience as a veteran weight without resorting to combat scenes to account for him. There is room to care about him and still worry about the life he has chosen for his daughter.
Michael McDonough’s cinematography gives the woodland enough attention for its attraction to make sense, without making an escape there look easy. The forest is a place to live and work, and the images keep that practical concern in view. Chad Keith’s production design is similarly attentive to lives sustained with limited resources. The surroundings feel used by the characters, which helps the film avoid making their hardship into something for us to admire from a comfortable distance.
Jane Rizzo’s editing allows those routines to establish a rhythm before the dealings with authority disturb it. The disruption has weight because we have had time to settle into their company. Dickon Hinchliffe’s music leaves the performances enough space, and does not make every hesitation sound momentous. We are trusted to pay attention to the small differences between what the father and daughter want.
The restraint does become wearing in places. Once Will’s difficulty with other people is clear, some of the film’s continued watchfulness yields little that is new. The writing occasionally depends on the actors to make another withheld response feel necessary, and even these performances cannot do that indefinitely. A firmer cut would have helped the middle without requiring a louder or more conventional drama.
For a story about people outside ordinary society, the film is refreshingly reluctant to make everyone they encounter a threat. Debra Granik’s interest in kindness keeps the drama from becoming a series of tests administered by unpleasant strangers. It makes Tom’s interest in a wider life persuasive, too: there might be something worth joining. Give it an evening when a quiet conversation can hold your attention; the actors deserve that much.
