A Perfect Day for Caribou

Jeb Berrier and Charlie Plummer (Lean on Pete, FFF 2018) are an estranged father and son who spend a day together trying to overcome a lifetime apart, as the older man contemplates his own end. The revelations they haltingly share are sometimes banal, sometimes hilarious, and often heart-wrenching, in scenes rendered starkly beautiful by the black-and-white landscape photography—shot in classic 4:3 aspect ratio—of award-winning cinematographer Alfonso Herrera Salcedo. The deliberate pacing in this debut feature from Jeff Rutherford gives space to appreciate both the story’s eccentricities—including an anxious search for a lost grandchild and flashbacks to things that might have been—and the majesty and loneliness of its high-desert Oregon setting. A reminder that, while we can never go back, the path forward often is not clear either.