Slamdance 2023 Film Festival  – I’ll say this up front. A Perfect Day for Caribou won’t be for everyone. It’s opening soliloquy by one of the two male leads is long and prosaic, like something out of a Thomas Wolfe novel. The film centers itself around the dialogue between father and son, as they lament past mistakes, regrets, and intergenerational trauma. Jeff Rutherford‘s feature debut is an artsy meditation on masculinity set against the jagged landscapes of the Pacific Northwest. This one requires patience, a whole lot of it.

When the film opens, Herman, played by Jeb Berrier, records a long note for his estranged son, Nate (Charlie Plummer). This goes on for several minutes and takes many detours regarding Herman’s hardships and even his fondness for caribous. Yet, he apologizes for nothing, including walking out on his son. This is one of the most effective sequences. Berrier is a strong and arresting actor.  Out of the blue, Nate calls his old man, and the two reunite in a cemetery, of all places. Nate brings along his own kid, Ralph (Oellis Levine). Both men struggle with their fears of failure. Though it’s unclear what jobs Herman had in the past, he does admit that he’s currently unemployed. Nate, meanwhile, works as janitor at his former junior high school, to the dismay of his girlfriend. However, she shoots down his dreams to find a more creative profession. He’s stuck.

Shot in black in white, the film uses a 4:3 ratio which makes it look cramped. This contrasts with the vast landscapes of the Oregon forests, peaks, valleys, and fields where father and son roam, filling each other in on their lackluster lives. Plummer’s performance differs quite a bit from Berrier’s, as his character often mumbles and slow walks but does have outbursts of raw emotion, including anger. One of his strongest scenes occurs past the halfway point when he admits he wants more for his son and hopes he experiences only a “limited kind of hurt.” There’s quite a malaise to this feature, capturing the duo’s anxiety that their lives will never improve. Because there’s such little music, the film focuses on their back-and-forth conversations and the sound of their sluggish footsteps. Even when Ralph goes missing at one point, they don’t exactly jump into action to find him. There’s simply no sense of urgency between either man. This may frustrate some viewers. You have to wonder why they don’t stop bemoaning their lives for a minute and spring into action to find the kid.

A Perfect Day for Caribou is a gorgeous-looking film that echos a certain strain of 20th Century American literature. It contains the father/son conflict so prevalent in Hemingway’s Nick Adams stories, the exploration of intergenerational trauma and memory like one of J.D. Salinger’s stories, and a landscape that becomes its own character like a Steinbeck novel. This very much is an American narrative about a father and son trying to figure things out while hoping the youngest doesn’t inherit their sins. This feature may be too slow-paced for some, but I suspect there’s an audience out there for it.

6.5 Out of 10