Review: The Mustang
"I'm not good with people," Roman Colman grunts in The Mustang, the terrific feature debut from French actress Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre. It's a familiar story, but the humanism and almost primal and poetic majesty with which she tells the tale elevates it to something powerful that lingers long in the memory.
Colman is played by Matthias Schoenaerts, whose dynamism as an actor derives from the push and pull between brutality and tenderness. He's a quietly devastating performer and Colman is one of his finest portrayals. Colman has been incarcerated for 12 years, most of it spent in isolation. Afforded an opportunity to re-enter the prison's general population, he's placed in a program run by the Bureau of Land Management in which wild mustangs are rounded up and sent to prisons to be trained before being sold at public auction. Though initially tasked to shovel horse excrement, he soon finds himself drawn to one "particularly crazed" stallion. Seeing an affinity between the two, the program's director Myles, a grumpy rancher played to perfection by Bruce Dern, decides to give him a try as a trainer and assigns Henry (Jason Mitchell) as his teacher.
The parallels between Colman and his horse, soon christened Marcus, are obvious from the jump but the way in which de Clermont-Tonnerre and Schoenaerts handle its development with care and delicacy is almost startling. Both Colman and Marcus need to control themselves. Colman naturally defaults to violence when feeling frustrated or vulnerable, and his eruption of anger when Marcus doesn't listen to him may be unsurprising but it is shocking nonetheless. Yet that moment is soon followed by one of the most purely exquisite moments, that of a defeated Colman, sitting slumped against an expanse of sky, as Marcus' head enters the frame and nuzzles him. In lesser hands, it might have been a cornball moment but it absolutely captures the heart and soul.
There's a spareness and unsentimentality to the proceedings that makes every drop of emotion well-earned and heartfelt. The final shot is an especial tearjerker. De Clermont-Tonnerre displays an economy and simplicity that renders The Mustang a potent portrait of the male ego and announces her as a brilliant filmmaker to watch.
The Mustang
Directed by: Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre
Written by: Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre
Starring: Matthias Schoenaerts, Jason Mitchell, Bruce Dern, Gideon Adlon, Connie Britton, Josh Stewart
