‘The Mustang’ Finds Beauty in the Familiar (FILM REVIEW)

[rating=7.00]

An air of familiarity permeates throughout The Mustang, as it does with any movie involving a horse, the mere presence of which suggests only a few possible plots. A troubled person. An unruly animal. An unlikely redemption. Going into the film you more or less know what it is you’re likely to get.

And yet, even despite the overwhelmingly recognizable feel of The Mustang, the film still manages to find an emotional hook that draws you in and compels you with an undeniable richness of spirit that overcomes the basic familiarity of its narrative.

This is, no doubt, due to the efforts of director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre (who gets a screenplay credit alongside Mona Fastvold and Brock Norman Brock) and her undeniable cinematic skill. A raw power pulsates throughout the work, lending The Mustang a far greater impact than one might otherwise expect.

We follow an inmate of a Nevada prison, Roman (Matthias Schoenaerts) as he is transferred to a new institution. A man with a violent past, he has no concerns with rehabilitation or co-mingling with his fellow inmates. By happenstance, he’s assigned to outdoor work duty which, here, means caring for the wild horses caught by the Bureau of Land Management to sell at an auction for funding. Under the guiding eyes of the program director, Myles (Bruce Dern) and fellow inmate Henry (Jason Mitchell), Roman forms a powerful bond with an untamable horse that opens his heart and mind.

The film takes inspiration from an actual program offered to Nevada prisoners, which has inmates breaking and taming the wild horses for use on farms and ranches and in law enforcement. While the film itself is not based on any particular true story, the nearly two decade old program does offer us some philosophical insight into the nature of rehabilitation.

Clermont-Tonnerre explores this well, giving a narrative that’s sparse on hand-holding and relying on the audience to fill in gaps where they might need filling. Roman’s journey is an emotional one that doesn’t necessarily offer any clear redemption but does show us that, perhaps, there is a redemptive sliding scale.

Both beast and man can be broken and tamed, though by how much depends largely on the nature of their spirits. Schoenaerts plays Roman with subtlety, mirroring the script’s scant information. His monosyllabism speaks mountains, as does his posture and stance. Movement does the bulk of the heavy lifting here, and we watch his story of redemption unfold largely through the softening of his body language as he opens himself up for, possibly, the first time in his life.

Even as we basically know what to expect from The Mustang, there’s a kind of beauty to it that’s undeniable. Sparse and electric, it mines a familiar territory in ways that still manage to move and provoke. It’s considerable debut feature for Clermont-Tonnerre and a powerful showing for Schoenaerts that’s more than worthy of contemplation.

The Mustang is now playing in select theaters.

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