Trauma and disappointment drive us apart.
If we’re lucky, the nagging desire for closure might prompt a reunion.
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| Cal (Owen Teague) thinks that bringing an elderly, arthritic horse to upstate New York is a crazy idea, but his half-sister Erin (Haley Lu Richardson) is adamant: She wants the horse to accompany her back home. |
The often wrenching angst is driven by nuanced performances from Owen Teague and Haley Lu Richardson, as estranged half-siblings brought together as morose, somewhat reluctant witnesses to a crucial passing. The tone is relentlessly somber, the pacing just this side of glacial (likely too slow, for some viewers.)
The story begins as twentysomething Cal (Teague) returns to the family home and ranch in the big-sky landscape of Montana’s Paradise Valley. He has been summoned by tragedy: A stroke has rendered his father comatose and dependent upon life support and the patient attention of a full-time caregiver (Gilbert Owuor, as Ace).
The homecoming is far from comfortable, and Cal never comes close to rushing to his father’s bedside; he’s perfect content to leave ministration in the hands of Ace, a Kenyan immigrant who — no doubt a veteran of such vigils — likely is familiar with prickly family dynamics. Ace isn’t the slightest bit judgmental; Owuor radiates kindness, sympathy and understanding.
Cal is easily distracted by the mountain of mortgage debt and creditors’ statements that have long been ignored (nor does this surprise him). There’s also the matter of Mr. T, an arthritic, 25-year-old black stallion kept in the barn and cared for by Native American housekeeper Valentina (Kimberly Guerrero) and her adult son Joey (Asivak Koostachin), once a childhood friend of Erin and Cal’s.
The multi-ethnic casting is deliberate. We get a sense that Cal’s father’s many sins — unspoken and mostly unacknowledged, until the third act — include racism, and that Cal may have inherited enough of this tendency to be instinctively uncomfortable in Ace and Valentina’s presence … while simultaneously struggling against such knee-jerk behavior, in an effort to be a better, fair-minded person.
All of this remains unspoken; we infer and deduce such details, and likely back-story, via Teague’s thoughtful, richly layered acting. This is one of those cases where viewers’ likely unfamiliarity with his previous work — some may recognize him from the recent TV miniseries adaptation of Stephen King’s The Stand — is an advantage, because it allows Teague to more easily become Cal. It’s not merely a performance; we recognize that this could be somebody living next door.
