I love the movie Strange World. It’s charming, compelling, visually gorgeous, and doesn’t get enough hype.
It was my kids’ favorite for awhile like a year ago, but we hadn’t watched it since. I put it on while I needed to keep them in one place with me for awhile but couldn’t move much after surgery, and we all watched with rapt and renewed interest.
(This post will have spoilers for Strange World!)
Among other themes, the movie explores the relationship between fathers and sons — or, more broadly, generational parenting, though it’s specifically with fathers and sons in the movie. The brief backstory at the beginning of the film tells us that Jaeger, a famous explorer, wanted to find out what was beyond the mountains of his village. It was his life’s passion and when he had a baby boy (named Searcher), he even carried him along with him in a baby carrier, the two of them inseparable as the baby grew up into a boy who adored his father.
When the boy was a young man, though, he began to get interested in a different path for himself. He was curious about the plants they encountered as they traveled, and his mind could think of incredible inventions to create with the power the plants provided.
At a crucial moment, Jaeger decided not to listen to his son Searcher, and to travel forward alone. If Searcher didn’t want to be exactly like him, if his son didn’t value what he valued, he would literally leave him behind. He goes missing and is never seen again.
Searcher goes home and starts a life, and a farm, growing these incredible and powerful plants. He has a family and a child of his own, Ethan, who’s already a teenager when we meet him. He’s happy with his farm life, but of course there’s a call to adventure. The whole family ends up on it, and they even rediscover Jaeger, who is still alive.
From here, one of the main foci is all three men, and the relationships between each of them.
Jaeger, with his passion for exploring but in a selfish and violent way (I mean, it is still a kids’ movie though). He has a homemade flamethrower and doesn’t care about destroying the living flora and fauna of the “strange world” they’ve found themselves in if it means he can carve out a pathway for himself.
Searcher, who doesn’t want to be exploring and wants to be back at his home on the farm. He has missed Jaeger but is angry with him for the way he was raised, and angry about being abandoned. He’s on edge about Jaeger’s impact on Ethan and wary of the two of them being together, quick to accuse Jaeger of poisoning his son against him. But he can’t see the pressure he’s still putting on Ethan — the same way Jaeger put pressure on him. Since the pressure isn’t to explore and adventure, but to live a “normal” life and farm, he doesn’t realize that he’s repeating the pattern he grew up with.
He also doesn’t realize the violence still present in his worldview. He’s trying to be antiviolent. He’s not his father. But he’s still willing to selfishly prioritize, to kill and hurt living elements of the land. He sees it as pruning, weeding, like farming. When his gentler son Ethan tries to approach him about how he still sees it as violence, how what Ethan loves instead is trying to live peaceably and harmoniously with the environment, Searcher brushes him off, and pushes him away.
There is so much depth, emotion, character, power in this story being told. In exploring how each generation relates to one another, messes up, repairs, does better. In what they prioritize and what they love. If you haven’t already seen it, you should give it a watch.
