“Wild Horse Nine” Made Me Cry

Wild Horse Nine has a weird sales pitch.  It’s Of Mice and Men, if it were a dark comedy about the C.I.A.  This sounds a bit impossible to pull off.  But Wild Horse Nine does indeed pull it off, and more. 

This movie has a few things going for it right off the bat.  It is written and directed by Martin McDonagh, who directed In Bruges, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and The Banshees of Inisherin.  It also features a star-studded cast, including John Malkovich, Sam Rockwell, Steve Buscemi, and Parker Posey.  Now that you lay that out, what could go wrong? Well, basically nothing, because this movie is virtually flawless.

Wild Horse Nine starts as a straight-forward comedy, complete with the Abbott and Costello dynamic of straight man and funny guy.  As the film approaches the halfway mark, the thought creeps into the audience’s mind that “this is a very dark comedy.”  Past the halfway mark, you start to realize that you’ve left the mainland of comedy and flown to the island of tear-jerker.  By the end, you are bawling. 

Probably the aspect that does the most heavily lifting is John Malkovich’s performance as Chris.  Not to disrespect any of the other fantastic actors in the film, but his performance is particularly transformative.  It doesn’t feel like an actor playing an elderly dying man, it feels like an elderly dying man is on screen in front of you.  It takes an unbelievable amount of skill to emulate these mannerisms to this level of precision, and Malkovich does it perfectly. 

But, very close behind Malkovich’s performance is the layered theme.  By the end of the film, there’s no mystery: this movie is about the reality of death.  Of course, the most surface-level and also most powerful portrayal of this in the film is Malkovich’s character, and that would be sufficient, but there’s more to it than that.  The movie is set against the backdrop of the overthrow of the Chilean democracy in the 1970s.  Two characters, played by Mariana de Girolamo and Ailin Salas, represent the youth of Chile at the time.  Watching their hopes and dreams be shattered, only to be replaced with the fear of being tortured to death, can be just as powerful as the main plotline.  There are many other elements that parallel each other in this idea, from humor about whether dinosaurs are going to Heaven to a horse that Malkovich’s character feels a particular fondness towards.

This movie chooses to focus on white male characters during a time of tumult in a Latin American country, particularly for the most prominent female characters in the film.  That might be a turn-off for some, seemingly elevating the perspective of the most privileged characters.  At the same time, it feels very respectful towards the historical moment that it chooses as its setting, because of the power of the way it portrays grief.  It does not need to make Chile its main setting, or Chileans its main characters, to powerfully portray the way in which the overthrow of its democracy by the United States affected people.  It does that through the power of parallel. 

Flowers should be given to very experienced cinematographer Ben Davis.  Despite not being a big-budget blockbuster, the film manages to be visually beautiful, whether as a virtue of the filming locations, or the near perfect use of outdoor lighting, or the framing of the picture.  There is a particular sequence involving Malkovich’s character and his brother on the telephone, where the visuals of their surroundings contrasts in a way that parallels the emotions that they are feeling in that moment.

See Wild Horse Nine.  Because it is great.  There is no aspect of this film that falls short, except perhaps in minor ways.  It may feel familiar, and it may not give us everything that everybody wants, but what it does give is so emotionally compelling that it is impossible to ignore.  This film will most certainly be featured heavily in awards season, and deservingly so.  It is quite possibly the movie of the year. 

P.S. I believe all of the dinosaurs – not just the vegetarians – are in Heaven.