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OFF THE MAP Send This Review to a Friend
You’ve heard of “The Man Who Came to Dinner.” The new film “Off the Map,” directed by Campbell Scott, has an IRS man who comes to stay. The lives of characters in this quirky but appealing film stand in charming contrast to the daily rat race in which so much of the world is engaged. The choice is to live in near isolation in a remote part of New Mexico and survive by a combination of growing food, handicraft, barter and government checks. Nobody thinks about filing tax returns, which brings the IRS auditor.
Joan Allen, who is being lauded for her role in another newly released film (The Upside of Anger) plays Arlene, the stoical lady of the house. Sam Elliott is her husband Charley, who has sunk into a deep depression and refuses to take drugs that might help him. His friend George is portrayed by J.K. Simmons. Arlene and Charley have a precocious 11-year-old daughter, Bo, winsomely enacted by Valentina De Angeles. Bo longs to be a writer and she is spirited and independent in her quest and outlook on the world. There is poetry and idealism in her soul.
The story is told in flashback from the viewpoint of the adult Bo, with the narration by Amy Brenneman. When William Gibbs, the IRS agent, played with an air of wonder and decency by Jim True-Frost, arrives at the household, he can scarcely believe what he finds. The lifestyle and the warmth and openness he discovers seduce him into accepting an invitation to stay, first for a night when he feels ill, which then develops into his being accepted as one of the family. Gibbs takes a liking to Bo and undertakes to make a painting that will express her romantic view of the horizon. He doesn’t realize it, but he is lunching his fame as an artist.
Joan Ackerman’s screenplay is wisely low-key, and Scott has directed in the same vein, never pushing too hard and allowing the film to gradually grow on an audience, seducing a viewer in the manner that the IRS man has been seduced, by an offbeat life in which decency and affection between people has more value than worldly possessions. A Holedigger Studios release.
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