The Wanting MareSometimes you have a dream that, after you awaken, you think back on and...just can't quite piece together--what it meant or what it was about, or even if it made any sense. That's essentially the feeling that one gets when watching The Wanting Mare. I'd like to say that this soporific quality is a good thing, but regrettably, it isn't here. What follows is a movie that is approximately an hour and a half long, yet still manages to drag and befuddle. It is edited into a confusing mishmash that feels amateur, with some truly awful sound mixing. What little dialogue is present is almost never revealing, nor is it even articulate, often drowned out by background noise. So forgive me, dear reader, if what follows about The Wanting Mare is itself barely coherent, because like most dreams, this film isn't coherent either.
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To be honest, I think that I was a bit disheartened when I discovered that The Wanting Mare wasn't a good movie. After all, I've been drawn to dreamy and mysterious stories told through poetic use of cinematic language. One has but to look at the moving body of work by Terrence Malick to see exactly what I'm talking about. Or Shane Carruth, who--the story goes--was an executive producer of The Wanting Mare before removing himself from the credits, presumably to avoid affecting the film's chances of success with issues tied to his personal life. When I saw the trailer for The Wanting Mare, I had flashbacks to movies like Carruth's Upstream Color--a genius film--and Malick's many films, not least of which includes The Tree of Life. But there's a dark side in attempting to emulate these arthouse darlings: pretentiousness; The Wanting Mare has this in spades. I liked the idea of an opening title sequence that explains that there are two different cities (the names I forget), in the "north" and in the "south". In the northern city, it is perpetually hot. Many characters are often covered in sweat and rarely wear more than breezy clothing as a result. The southern city is supposedly much colder (spoilers: it is in a perpetual blizzard), and once a year, a massive ship transports horses from the north to the south for reasons unknown. Based on this, you would think that the movie would be largely concerned with this oceanic transportation of equines, but no. Instead, the story revolves around a series of women who collectively experience a dream of what life was like "before" some presumably apocalyptic event, as there appear to be only two towns in the whole world. There are no answers to explain why they experience this dream, nor what this past they psychically recall signifies. (Heads up, dear reader, as I intend to spoil the entire plot from here, with an explanation forthcoming.)
The story begins with a woman giving birth--presumably also expiring in the process--muttering some kind of recollection or dream. The child grows up on her own (somehow) and into a young woman named Moira (Jordan Monaghan), who spends her days by the ocean, and nights in some abandoned storage facility adorned with blue lights, while swaying to an 8-track cassette of some kind of music. It's all very vague and unseated, and it doesn't get much better when she stumbles into a man who's been wounded named Lawrence (played by the writer/director of the film, Nicholas Ashe Bateman). Moira apparently is looking for a "ticket" to take the ship to the southern city, and Lawrence presumably has one. Lawrence is apparently a gangster of a kind, and for some inexplicable reason, he and Moira form a romantic relationship, despite a complete lack of chemistry between them. Then Lawrence finds a baby on the shoals and takes care of the baby while distancing himself from Moira. Then Lawrence convinces his mob buddies to rob some other mob, because he thinks that they have a ticket. There's some unconvincing gunplay, and the (yet again) wounded Lawrence returns to Moira, but gives her the baby instead of a ticket and scrams.
Jump cut to thirty-three years later. Now we're following another gangster, credited as Hadeon (Edmond Cofie), who is in some kind of turf war or something. A young woman calling herself Eirah (Yasamin Keshtkar) asks to crash at his "place"--which is yet another abandoned building--and tells him to call a number she gives him if she doesn't come back one night, so someone can come care for her horse. She has a pet horse, it seems, but--ahem--hold your horses if you're thinking that this is going to connect with the premise of the film, where horses are shipped south, because it doesn't. She's a lot like Moira, and claims that she has the same kind of dreams that Moira (and her mother) did. As they become closer, Eirah reveals to Hadeon that she was the baby on the shoals, and is somehow able to have these same dreams, even though the film heretofore has suggested that this was a hereditary characteristic. What's also kind of odd is that the baby in the first act looked to have far darker skin than Eirah, and the cutaway suggests that it was Hadeon who was the baby, not Eirah. (I chalk this incongruity up to The Wanting Mare once again being either too coy for its audience and/or too inexpertly made.) Hadeon procures a ticket (or two, it's unclear, yet again), and apparently gives a ticket to Eirah, even though she previously said that she had no intention of going south. Jump another year into the future, and...she's been shot? And, oh, her sister named Elien (Maxine Muster) shows up and takes her to a man out in the countryside, who is apparently an older Lawrence (Josh Clark), who is unable to save Eirah's life. Then the horse starts to lick her, and she starts to crumble into ash. So old Lawrence takes her remains, tosses them over a cliff, then goes to see an older Moira (Christine Kellogg-Darrin), who also lives out in the countryside, but still has a telephone, from which she gets a call from Hadeon (she thinks it's Eirah calling her), who--wounded--uses a ticket to board the ship south himself. (And no one on board seems to mind that he's half-naked and riddled with bullet holes.) Old Lawrence can't bring himself to tell old Moira that Eirah's dead, so they go to a night club swathed in blue light playing some generic-sounding pop music, then make love--as they did in their youth--in the back of a car. He tells her he will never see her again, and then we close with Hadeon snowbound in the south, as a horse is let loose into a blizzard. The End.
The reason I have chosen to sum up the plot almost in its entirety is twofold. First, I wanted to see just how much of this movie I could recall and what that meant to me. While there is a plot, it's slim and too sparse to be meaningful. It's sad, really, because these are the kinds of movies that I normally gravitate toward. Yet it reminded me of the artistry found in better films not found here. The cinematic language in The Wanting Mare is confusing as well, with editing so jarring, it feels virtually epileptic. It also doesn't help that the dialogue--barely audible because of the aforementioned background noise and that everyone speaks very quietly--is just filler. There isn't one poignant statement in the entire film, nothing to serve as a meditation on the experience of watching The Wanting Mare. Everything just feels like a missed opportunity. It's like Nicholas Ashe Bateman had an idea for an epic sci-fi/fantasy/drama but couldn't quite get everything to coalesce, due to a lack of talent and perhaps expertise (including a cast of actors who feel woefully inexperienced). I wish enthusiastic and daring filmmakers the best in their endeavors, but between Bateman's writing, directing, and even his wooden acting, he has a long road ahead of him. The second reason I had was to, perhaps, offer some insight to any readers who might consider seeing this film--if I haven't scared you off yet--with this synopsis. Maybe your experience will differ from mine, but--forgive the pun, dear reader--this film left me "wanting".
Recommended for: Fans of a rough draft version of a dreamy and ephemeral arthouse movie that defines pretentiousness. The Wanting Mare is a reminder that although these kind of movies can be poetic masterpieces and explore too oft ignored aspects of cinema, there are others which fail to tell their poetry with either art or finesse, as is the regrettable case with this one.
The story begins with a woman giving birth--presumably also expiring in the process--muttering some kind of recollection or dream. The child grows up on her own (somehow) and into a young woman named Moira (Jordan Monaghan), who spends her days by the ocean, and nights in some abandoned storage facility adorned with blue lights, while swaying to an 8-track cassette of some kind of music. It's all very vague and unseated, and it doesn't get much better when she stumbles into a man who's been wounded named Lawrence (played by the writer/director of the film, Nicholas Ashe Bateman). Moira apparently is looking for a "ticket" to take the ship to the southern city, and Lawrence presumably has one. Lawrence is apparently a gangster of a kind, and for some inexplicable reason, he and Moira form a romantic relationship, despite a complete lack of chemistry between them. Then Lawrence finds a baby on the shoals and takes care of the baby while distancing himself from Moira. Then Lawrence convinces his mob buddies to rob some other mob, because he thinks that they have a ticket. There's some unconvincing gunplay, and the (yet again) wounded Lawrence returns to Moira, but gives her the baby instead of a ticket and scrams.
Jump cut to thirty-three years later. Now we're following another gangster, credited as Hadeon (Edmond Cofie), who is in some kind of turf war or something. A young woman calling herself Eirah (Yasamin Keshtkar) asks to crash at his "place"--which is yet another abandoned building--and tells him to call a number she gives him if she doesn't come back one night, so someone can come care for her horse. She has a pet horse, it seems, but--ahem--hold your horses if you're thinking that this is going to connect with the premise of the film, where horses are shipped south, because it doesn't. She's a lot like Moira, and claims that she has the same kind of dreams that Moira (and her mother) did. As they become closer, Eirah reveals to Hadeon that she was the baby on the shoals, and is somehow able to have these same dreams, even though the film heretofore has suggested that this was a hereditary characteristic. What's also kind of odd is that the baby in the first act looked to have far darker skin than Eirah, and the cutaway suggests that it was Hadeon who was the baby, not Eirah. (I chalk this incongruity up to The Wanting Mare once again being either too coy for its audience and/or too inexpertly made.) Hadeon procures a ticket (or two, it's unclear, yet again), and apparently gives a ticket to Eirah, even though she previously said that she had no intention of going south. Jump another year into the future, and...she's been shot? And, oh, her sister named Elien (Maxine Muster) shows up and takes her to a man out in the countryside, who is apparently an older Lawrence (Josh Clark), who is unable to save Eirah's life. Then the horse starts to lick her, and she starts to crumble into ash. So old Lawrence takes her remains, tosses them over a cliff, then goes to see an older Moira (Christine Kellogg-Darrin), who also lives out in the countryside, but still has a telephone, from which she gets a call from Hadeon (she thinks it's Eirah calling her), who--wounded--uses a ticket to board the ship south himself. (And no one on board seems to mind that he's half-naked and riddled with bullet holes.) Old Lawrence can't bring himself to tell old Moira that Eirah's dead, so they go to a night club swathed in blue light playing some generic-sounding pop music, then make love--as they did in their youth--in the back of a car. He tells her he will never see her again, and then we close with Hadeon snowbound in the south, as a horse is let loose into a blizzard. The End.
The reason I have chosen to sum up the plot almost in its entirety is twofold. First, I wanted to see just how much of this movie I could recall and what that meant to me. While there is a plot, it's slim and too sparse to be meaningful. It's sad, really, because these are the kinds of movies that I normally gravitate toward. Yet it reminded me of the artistry found in better films not found here. The cinematic language in The Wanting Mare is confusing as well, with editing so jarring, it feels virtually epileptic. It also doesn't help that the dialogue--barely audible because of the aforementioned background noise and that everyone speaks very quietly--is just filler. There isn't one poignant statement in the entire film, nothing to serve as a meditation on the experience of watching The Wanting Mare. Everything just feels like a missed opportunity. It's like Nicholas Ashe Bateman had an idea for an epic sci-fi/fantasy/drama but couldn't quite get everything to coalesce, due to a lack of talent and perhaps expertise (including a cast of actors who feel woefully inexperienced). I wish enthusiastic and daring filmmakers the best in their endeavors, but between Bateman's writing, directing, and even his wooden acting, he has a long road ahead of him. The second reason I had was to, perhaps, offer some insight to any readers who might consider seeing this film--if I haven't scared you off yet--with this synopsis. Maybe your experience will differ from mine, but--forgive the pun, dear reader--this film left me "wanting".
Recommended for: Fans of a rough draft version of a dreamy and ephemeral arthouse movie that defines pretentiousness. The Wanting Mare is a reminder that although these kind of movies can be poetic masterpieces and explore too oft ignored aspects of cinema, there are others which fail to tell their poetry with either art or finesse, as is the regrettable case with this one.