Off the Map

I'm a little sensitive about movies that deal with mental illness. In our culture, stigma is in the groundwater and the mentally ill are usually portrayed as psychopathic killers (author's note: big difference between someone who's psychotic and someone who's a sociopath.) Perhaps that's why I found this little movie charming. This film explores a very real mental illness - clinical depression - in a gentle and sympathetic fashion.

Charley and Arlene Groden (Sam Elliot and Joan Allen) are not your average couple. With their precocious daughter Bo (a delightful Valentina d'Angelis,) they've elected to live "off the map," growing their own food and bartering for everything else in a tiny town in New Mexico. Charley has sunk into a deep and lasting depression for no apparent reason, and as Arlene struggles to hold the family together they are suddenly visited by the IRS for several years of failing to file income taxes. The agent (Jim True-Frost) finds himself enamored with the Grodens, particularly Arlene, and ends up staying on and pursuing his own demons right along with Charley.

Campbell Scott has directed a sensitive, magical look into the hearts of his characters. Elliot and Allen are perfectly cast as our starcrossed oddballs. It may require some suspension of disbelief, but this is a sweet little modern fairy tale about love and letting it be. More info here.