For boys of the Oglala Lakota tribe like 12-year-old Matho (LaDainian Crazy Thunder), and young men such as 23-year-old Bill (Jojo Bapteise Whiting), growing up on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota is a daily battle. Without a consistent male role model, Matho shapes himself in the image of his errant, unpredictable, meth-addicted dad. Already the father of two baby boys by two different women, Bill is determined to hustle his way out of poverty, juggling jobs for a sleazy local turkey farmer, and hoping to sell pure-bred poodle pups on the side. There’s a desperate, unforgiving beauty to the landscape – shot, with liberal use of pink-hued, magic-hour glow, in generous widescreen, by Colombian cinematographer David Gallego (Embrace of the Serpent, I Am Not a Witch). And the non-professional cast, drawn from the community in which these interlocking, quasi-mythic tales of manhood in the making are set, is rooted, real and persuasive.
The feature debut from the directing partnership of Gina Gammell and Riley Keough, War Pony has a kinship with the work of Chloé Zhao and Roberto Minervini. It won the Caméra d’Or for best first feature at last year’s Cannes film festival, but as Gammell and Keough would be the first to admit, this is not a film driven by an overriding directorial vision. Instead, it’s a collaborative work, woven from the first-hand experiences of the film’s Native American co-writers, Franklin Sioux Bob and Bill Reddy. They give a vivid, fleshed-out account of Pine Ridge, but are not, it’s fair to say, in the business of romanticising the realities of reservation living.
