Mortensen and the actors who play Ben's children went through a physical and intellectual boot camp of sorts a couple of weeks before shooting.

"We did rock climbing and martial arts and played a lot of music together and spent time together and did woodcraft, tracking, skinning, gutting animals," said Mortensen.

"You name it, we did everything, and by the time we got to the first day of shooting, we knew each other really well, we had a good shorthand, we knew and appreciated each other's strengths and weaknesses."

Mortensen said when he first read the script, he didn't know what to make of the title.

"And then I realized, I guess you could put a question mark after it, it's sort of tongue-in-cheek. It asks more questions than it answers. It posits that perhaps this is the greatest father in the world and then the next minute you're thinking, 'This guy is a menace to society.'"

Still, he ascribes to some of Ben's views, including his matter-of-fact approach to communication.

Poor communication is a problem in many countries, said Mortensen.

He also laments those who use new technologies not to learn more about the world but "to reinforce their pre-existing ideologies or points of view in shallow ways."

"There's so much more that we could do and probably will, eventually," he added. "One thing is to go play 'Pokemon Go,' and I guess there's nothing wrong with that. Another is to find out exactly what's going on in your government and your community and what people have done in the past when they've come up against obstacles of society, to communication, to war, poverty. There's a lot more that we can learn.

"So I guess this movie made me feel like it's worthwhile, life is short, I want to find out more. That's the way I feel anyway but it just reinforced it tenfold."

By Victoria Ahearn, The Canadian Press