The Mustang: A thoroughbred

The Mustang (2019) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for profanity, drug content and violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.12.19

Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre isn’t afraid to minimize dialog.

The impatient Roman (Matthias Schoenaerts) gets absolutely nowhere during his early
sessions with the wild buckskin he has named Marquis. The reason is simple: The
horse isn't about to yield to a man who radiates such impatience and anger.

More than most, the Paris-born filmmaker understands the dramatic impact of silence and ambient sounds; she trusts her actors, cinematographer (Ruben Impens) and editor (Géraldine Mangenot) to shape and tell the story.

De Clermont-Tonnerre recognizes that cinema is a visual medium, where the accomplished manipulation of image is just as important as anything else … if not more so. This isn’t radio, where long speeches are necessary to convey context.

A good film director lets us see it, digest it. And confidently expects us to get it.

Roman Coleman (Matthias Schoenaerts), halfway through an 11-year sentence for domestic violence at the Northern Nevada Correctional Center, has resisted rehabilitation efforts. We meet him during a session with the prison psychologist (Connie Britton), who can’t get much out of him. Roman is stoic, wary and uncooperative.

“I’m not good with people,” he finally mumbles.

She therefore assigns him to the prison’s “outdoor maintenance” program.

As we learn during an introductory text screen, the public rangelands in our 10 western states are home to roughly 100,000 wild horses that struggle to survive in an environment that can comfortably support roughly one-quarter that many. To help stabilize the population and prevent habitat destruction, thousands are captured each year by the Bureau of Land Management; the lucky ones are adopted, while many spend the rest of their lives in long-term holding facilities.

(Watching a herd rounded up by helicopter, as the film begins, is a jaw-dropper. Who knew?)

Since 1990, a few hundred have been sent every year to the Wild Horse Inmate Program, where they’re trained for sale at public auction.

The results are impressive — astonishing, even — for both men and mustangs. As dog lovers already know, an animal’s unconditional love, and obvious lack of judgment, can reassure and help a damaged individual learn how to re-socialize.

Because not all prison inmates are unrepentant thugs and sociopaths. (Many are, but that’s not the point.) The mystery at the heart of this story — co-written by de Clermont-Tonnerre, Brock Norman Brock and Mona Fastvold — concerns the nature of Roman’s crime, his feelings about it, and how he’s processing the consequences (if at all). Answers don’t come quickly; the narrative is parsimonious with detail.

He has a temper; that surfaces quickly. When frustrated, he rages. But does it spring from malice, or something else?

The key here is Schoenaerts’ fascinating, sublimely subtle performance. At first blush, Roman’s eyes are haunted, resigned and unyielding. We suspect he’s not a fight-or-flight guy; he’ll always fight. And yet intelligence and curiosity clearly flicker behind the defensive posture; Schoenaerts displays … well … willingness.

At the same time, Roman clearly would deny as much. This is a man who needs to know himself better, in the same way — given the nature of this story — that weneed to understand him.

His initial duties go no further than shoveling manure, much to the amusement of Henry (Jason Mitchell), an affable, experienced inmate trainer. But Roman is drawn to a small, wholly covered enclosure where an aggressively agitated mustang repeatedly kicks the walls. Roman is warned off by the irascible Myles (Bruce Dern), the program’s head trainer and resident father figure.

But Roman can’t let it go, perhaps because he sympathizes with an animal restricted to solitary confinement: a parallel de Clermont-Tonnerre doesn’t overstate, but which we perceive nonetheless. This will become Roman’s horse — of course — but that evolving dynamic will be anything but smooth. The Mustang isn’t a Hollywood fantasy with quick results and easy answers; de Clermont-Tonnerre respects her audience too much, to indulge in such romantic nonsense.

Sidebar issues also abound. Roman gets infrequent visits from his pregnant 16-year-old daughter, Martha (Gideon Adlon), visibly resentful and present only because she wants him to sign emancipation papers. Although sensing that she’s heading down the wrong path, Roman can’t begin to connect with the girl; he doesn’t know how, and she’s too angry to allow it. (Again, we wonder: Why?)

Then there’s Roman’s cellmate, Dan (Josh Stewart), who — although grudgingly compliant — radiates menace; we just know he’s gonna do something bad. And on a seemingly trivial note, why does Henry always wear two white T-shirts?

Dern essentially reprises the feisty old coot he played so well in 2013’s Nebraska, albeit with a kinder edge. Dern doesn’t merely speak his lines; he tears off each syllable like a hyena ripping at a carcass. Myles has no patience for people he hasn’t yet cause to respect, but once trust is granted, it’s absolute. He cares deeply for the men under his wing, and the feeling is mutual. They follow his orders with a degree of willingness they’d never expose to the prison guards.

Adlon is heartbreakingly persuasive as a sullen, rebellious teen forced to grow up much too quickly. Martha’s silent, wrathful gaze — each time Roman makes a feeble effort to connect — could make even the most hardened killer quail. And yet Adlon adds a note of vulnerability; we understand that Martha doesn’t want to be like this, but feels that she has no choice … if only for her own emotional survival.

Mitchell is a hoot as Henry: part group clown, part dispenser of useful advice. We can’t imagine what he did, to wind up in prison alongside so many hard cases. Britton makes the most of her brief scenes; her reaction is note-perfect during a group therapy session, when she quietly asks each man how much time elapsed, between the impulse for the violent act that landed them in prison, and its execution.

Additional verisimilitude is supplied by supporting actors — Thomas Smittle, William Adams and Michael Cameron Smith — who are real-life graduates of the Wild Horse Inmate Program.

The settings are fairly simple, making ample use of Carson City’s decommissioned Nevada State Prison; it absolutely sets the right tone and atmosphere. (“You feel like people were there yesterday,” de Clermont-Tonnerre observes, in the press notes. I don’t doubt it.) Production designer Carlos Conti enhances this verisimilitude with a wealth of detail; we can practically smell what constantly wafts from the squalid, cramped cell that Roman shares with Dan.

But the film’s heart blossoms from Roman’s lengthy sessions with the buckskin he has dubbed Marquis (played by two domestic Andalusian horses and one untrained mustang). Smittle — a professional horse trainer who works at Return to Freedom, the California sanctuary founded by Robert Redford (this film’s executive producer) — also served as one of the film’s horse wranglers. He worked miracles.

These scenes with Roman and Marquis are pure magic, particularly when the first breakthrough arrives. Here again, de Clermont-Tonnerre and Impens are so patient, letting the tableau play out at length. There won’t be a dry eye in the house.

The Mustang is a marvelous saga of hope, redemption and the power of forgiveness. And of surrendering to a 1,200-lb. creature that — just like you — wants to have a friend.