Inspired in no small measure by Walkabout, Nicolas Roeg's lyrical journey through the Australian outback, Campbell Scott's Off The Map takes place in what seems like the only patch of land in the continental U.S. that the title could describe. Through an apparent mix of hippie idealism and a general impulse to withdraw, Joan Allen and Sam Elliott live in a barren stretch of New Mexico in a small house, where they squirrel away Elliott's meager veteran's pay and live off what little the land yields. It's rare for an American film to visit such uncharted natural territory, perhaps because such places are becoming harder to find, and most of Off The Map's pleasures come from the quiet way it observes the family's delicate relationship to their physical surroundings. An actor by trade, Scott has yet to develop anything close to Roeg's visual sophistication or gift for montage, but he succeeds in capturing the beauty and brutality of the solitary life.
But he fails to animate his characters, who are all so absorbed in existential ennui that they can only communicate in cryptic phrases and gestures, as if the life's been wrung out of them. That's especially true of Elliott, who spends the long summer in a near-catatonic state, frozen in such deep depression that he sobs silently at the dinner table. When IRS flunkie Jim True-Frost shows up unexpectedly for an audit, he's immediately thunderstruck—first by a mesmerizing glimpse of Allen showering outdoors, then by a bee-sting that puts him out of commission for days. Though ostensibly assigned to poke through the couple's finances, True-Frost finds such inspiration in Allen and the breathtaking landscape that he puts down his calculator and picks up a paintbrush instead. His addition to the family excites Allen and Elliott's precocious young daughter Valentina de Angelis, who could use a new friend, but it introduces a strain on the couple's suddenly volatile marriage.
Working from Joan Ackermann's play, Scott defuses the inherent conflict between Allen, Elliott, and True-Frost to such an extent that the tension melts away and barely registers. Taking a page from the Terrence Malick playbook, Scott leans heavily on voiceover narration to carry the load, with Amy Brenneman supplying de Angelis' wistful adult perspective. If Scott were an imagist of Malick's caliber, he could get away with a little dramatic inertia, but Off The Map feels peculiar and remote, strangled by an air of arty disengagement. The most vivid characters are the earth and the sky, and they both give stellar performances.