The Mustang—directed by Laure-de-Cleremont-Tonnerre. Drama. 96 minutes Color 2019
★★★★
The Story: an enraged convict in for murder with no experience of horses must train a wild mustang.
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Sentimentality is the coinage of gold into innumerable copper pennies Thus The Mustang follows the order of horse pictures since their start in silent films. The human rescues the horse, the horse rescues the human, the human rescues the horse. It’s a good format, overburdened here with a musical score and bum writing.
What’s interesting first and last is the authenticity of everything else. The Mustang seems to have have been made in a Nevada desert prison. The mustang rescue mission seems to be manned by actual prisoners. The horses seem to be real wild horses. Bruce Dern is actually that cranky trainer.
That is to say you never believe the characters are actors or that the cells are sets, or that the animals are doing tricks. One feels one is there then. This presence with-and-among never declines.
Indeed, Matthias Schoennaerts an established Belgian movie star, but one new to me, seems to not have been cast but to have been dragged reluctantly out of some gutter to stand in for the surly furious prisoner.
When will he break?
He’s tall and muscled and paislyed with tattoos. He wont talk. He scowls. He shovels shit. That’s it.
But, boy, does he give you your money’s worth. Because the strength that validates his violence tells his tale—it is the same strength that backs the violence of the horse.
This is a tale of inescapable setting. You might be able to dive off Alcatraz and crawl to shore, but no one could cross that desert and live. You live in the cramped cell, the cramped dining hall, the cramped showers with men who are no longer free but seek to free their souls despite it. And you live in the temperament of the horse, who has patience for nothing but freedom, but finds it in marriage to this man.
The material substance of the film is better than the artistic substance. Yes, but the material substance enrapts the eye and carries all the necessary value, and it is plenty.
Does the prisoner’s character break?
All expectations for the usual horse film fall apart as he does.