Recently part of the Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival, War Pony from directors Riley Keough and Gina Gammell shows with convincing intimacy the near parallel lives of two young Lakota boys: Bill (Jojo Bapteise Whiting), an early 20s father of two seeking to provide in his own way, and Matho (Ladainian Crazy Thunder), a 12-year-old dealing with the impact of his own young father’s life and death.
Though near each other on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, the two lead characters don’t fully intersect for much of the film. Bill’s journey is to find a way to make a living coming from a socioeconomic place where there’s not always a clearcut path to job security. He impulsively gets himself a poodle with the hopes of breeding it. A puppy can get $2,000 he’s told. Bill’s got two sons and two baby mamas. One who’s in jail collect-calling Bill constantly to put up her bail. One who Bill wants back but doesn’t seem to want much to do with him.
Matho, not yet through puberty, is already drinking and smoking pot with his friends. It feels early on like the film will devolve into a Kids-like depression fest, but it escapes that gloominess with a dash more humour and a pinch less nihilism. It’s still uncomfortable to see the babyface Matho do drugs and steal his dad’s meth, but through giving us inner access to both the fear he has of his father and the desire to impress him, the film always reminds us that this is still a child we are watching. An innocent trying to figure out the world. Matho’s eventual grief leads him to lash out even more. His childlike ways of honouring his deceased loved one undercut his destructive behaviour in a truly heartbreaking way.
The parallel nature of our lives crops up again when Bill spots a middle-aged white man stranded on the side of the road. We see how the separate but nearby worlds of on and off-reservation coexist. The man is Tim (Sprague Hollander), a wealthy farmer. After some negotiations, Bill becomes Tim’s employee for official tasks at his turkey processing plant and unofficial ones like chauffeuring the girls from the reservation Tim routinely has sex with.
Tim and his younger wife Allison (Ashley Selton) seem to invite Bill into their world. They like to get fucked up too, but on fancy wine. Musical scenes at different points in the movie contrast two different approaches to life. The Lakota sing traditional songs in a group. Allison sings competently at a halloween party accompanied only by a pianist in a furry suit whose back is fully turned to the guests and the camera. She sounds good, but it creates an eerily awkward moment as everyone is forced to watch her perform alone.
The film avoids moralizing though or saying that one way of life is necessarily better than the other. All characters are allowed to do bad things. Some are a lot more likeable than others, true. Allison expresses the double standard of portraying certain groups of people more negatively for the same behaviour to Bill when she’s more focused on his potential acts of “sex trafficking” than her husband’s.
The stories of Bill and Matho come together near the end of the film in a nice moment of understanding and caring. It takes a village to raise a child, and the reservation with all its dysfunction manages to embody this. An auntie covers Matho when’s he short money at the convenience store, another auntie helps Bill by watching his kids, and Bill in turn helps young Matho when he’s hungry.
Bill has two young sons and Beast the poodle who’s pregnant with puppies. Matho must deal with the death of a parent. Tim and Allison, the vampiric white couple, are childless. Bill loves his sons although he often puts them in dangerous situations. The film doesn’t hit you over the head with whatever message is supposed to be taken away from all this if there is one. It allows a glimpse into the lives of two complicated, loveable characters on the backs of great performances by its two leads.
© 2020-2022. UniversalCinema Mag.