War Pony

 

War Pony

Directors – Gina Gammell, Riley Keough

Writers – Franklin Sioux Bob, Bill Reddy, Gina Gammell

2022, USA-UK

Stars - JoJo Bapteise Whiting, LaDainian Crazy Thunder, Iona Red Bear, Ta-Yamni Long Black Cat, Wilma Colhof

 

IMDB: “The interlocking stories of two young Oglala Lakota men growing up on the Pine Ridge Reservation.”

 

Initially, Bill’s Bill (JoJo Bapteise Whiting) introduction as a barely responsible young swaggerer of two girlfiends and children and the loose-limbed feel has a hint of Larry Clark, or Harmony Korine without the carnivaleque. But Whiting’s performance soon becomes more relatable and complex, and despite his waywardness, it always has the essence of someone’s goodness trying to get out but thwarted by poverty and immaturity. Meanwhile, Matho (LaDainian Crazy Thunder) is a somewhat quiet kid that just can’t seem to help getting into deeper trouble, cycling around the reserve with his pals like a drug-dealing variation on ‘Stranger Things’, although the feel is more loose-limbed like ‘We Are the Animals’. Or Waititi’s ‘Boy’, although this is even more obviously and deliberately downbeat.

 

Bill’s buying a poodle, hoping to breed, is not only a way for him to make money, but it feels like a subtle manifestation of his aspiration to care for something, even if he is a neglectful/clueless young father. Natho gets more resentful and angrier and neglected and isolated the more he tries to tough it all out. The film’s central sadness is watching him sink further into himself with bitterness. And there will be casualties, but not necessarily as you predict.

 

It’s this Native American specificity that gives ‘War Pony’ it’s polemic, social conscience and relevance (and it’s this that gives an otherwise mostly conventional low-budget sci-fi ‘Slash/Back’ added charm and poignancy). Screenwriter Sioux Bob is quoted by Nicolas Repold as saying at the Cannes festival: “In a lot of Native films, it’s either the poverty porn or it’s about onetopic. It’s about one dilemma, it’s not about everything, and that’s what thisfilm gives you: everything.” So domestic abuse will cut to the next moment: instead of dwelling, it quickly moves to how the circumstances, needs and opportunities have changed. And it’s this agenda that means the ending might seem underwhelming to some, that it might not satisfy, but that strikes as the point: you have an act of revenge, but you still wake up to the same shit’n’struggle every day.

 

Just as the story avoids being simply a downer, David Gallego’s cinematography stops short of being de-saturated by despair. And similarly, the characters we meet are given to hustle rather than melancholy. They’re not broken: they’re survivors. Perhaps poverty looks the same given any specificity, but film is a most potent platform/weapon for giving voice to the disenfranchised. ‘War Pony’ is one of those films that makes the ache of life within you rise to the surface.