Painted in slow long brushstrokes, assembled from a storyline that can appear jumpy at times, superbly acted, and steadily directed, Off The Map tells the story of a somewhat eccentric family that lives, as the film’s title suggests, in partial isolation from the outside world. In our age of back-to-sustainability, there is something compelling about the manner in which this family seems to somehow pull it all together. The problem arises when the father becomes depressed for no apparent reason – right at the start of the film, and we are left to observe how this affects his wife, who can no longer depend on him for support, and their imaginative and creative daughter.
Not much seems to be happening in this family’s isolated world until an IRS agent arrives to perform an unexpected audit. I will not go into the fairly thin yet nicely told story-line. The film’s strength is not in its plot but rather in its ability to paint a poetic, almost surreal, yet incredibly human atmosphere. It is a character-driven film, each character tells us a somewhat separate story which the filmmaker wonderfully weaves into a panoramic view of their magical universe.
Warning: this slow-pace jewel of a movie may not cater to everyone’s palate. If you elect to give it a shot, imagine watching a sunset - nothing is really going on while everything is happening...