For a film about a violent man now serving a long prison sentence, The Mustang is remarkably gentle and optimistic. It’s not at all interested in the reason why Roman (Matthias Schoenaerts) landed behind bars. While some spectators might see that as giving him a pass, it is essential to a film that uses the line “This is a safe space” without self-consciousness. Director and co-writer Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, who is French and now divides her time between Paris and New York, brings an outsider’s perspective to this story. Her first feature, it expands upon the ideas of her 2014 short “Rabbit,” in which a prisoner took care of a bunny.
Roman is serving his time in rural Nevada, and his pregnant 16-year-old daughter Martha (Gideon Adlon) wants him to sign a paper officially emancipating her from his legal guardianship. As part of the prison’s emphasis on restorative justice and rehabilitating its prisoners, Roman is asked to take part in “outdoor maintenance,” which involves working with wild horses. Aided by elderly trainer Myles (Bruce Dern) and fellow inmate Henry (Jason Miller), Roman takes the reins of a mustang he dubs Marquis. He’s given 90 days to train Marquis, and as he attempts to tame the horse, he learns to take charge of his own emotions. But Roman is pressured to start dealing ketamine, which is used as both a horse tranquilizer and a recreational drug, within the prison.
The Mustang isn’t exactly a Western, but like Chloe Zhao’s The Rider and Andrew Haigh’s Lean On Pete — both released in 2017 — it’s adjacent to the genre. It draws heavily on the iconography of classic Westerns, especially John Ford’s, framing its characters against beautiful mountain vistas. But these images contain a bitter irony: Their open spaces are mere backgrounds; if they represent freedom, whether or not Roman is aware of that connotation, they mock his incarceration. Leaving a prison cell to walk out into such beauty might be painful, and the attraction of horseback riding and tending to animals is understandable.
The film suffers from a few major problems — including the fact that the thriller elements are half-baked. Not much care is directed toward the drug-dealing subplot, and The Mustang would be stronger without it. A bigger issue is that Roman is the only human character who is fully fleshed out. Schoenaerts, a Belgian actor who tends to play tough guys, is given little dialogue, but he conveys both machismo — expressed mostly through body language and the director’s choice of camera angles — and a sense of inner turbulence. Henry doesn’t have much life of his own, and seems present only to help Roman on his journey, which could be said of virtually all of the characters. Marquis the horse actually has more presence in The Mustang than any human aside from Roman. To some extent, that seems to be by Clermont-Tonnerre’s design — after all, she named the film after him. Even so, The Mustang would benefit from being more austere and Bressonian.
The Mustang expresses the point of view that men who’ve committed serious crime deserve a second chance, rather than endless punishment, and puts forth a hope that people can change. While there’s some violence in this film, it’s a 180-degree switch from many of cinema’s more lurid treatments of prison. If that’s refreshing, The Mustang also seems evasive. It’s concerned with Roman’s future, not a past in which he seriously harmed his wife and daughter. When he tells the horse, “Gentle, gentle,” he’s talking to himself at least as much as the animal. Of course, in prison, he’s in an aggressive, all-male environment, and perhaps it’s safest to express emotions to an animal.
If The Mustang subverts certain American genre clichés, it lives up to another stereotype of a typical Sundance entry executive-produced by Robert Redford. Undeniably well-made, it feels like it’s critiquing one audience’s set of assumptions about violence and masculinity while catering to another’s. I wish it had a chance of reaching and speaking to guys who still think John Wayne was an admirable man.
