War Pony: Film Review
I don’t know what I expected the directorial debut from Zola and Daisy Jones & The Six star Riley Keough to look like but I could never have predicted the remarkable War Pony.
Co-directed and co-written with Keough and her friend Gina Gammell, War Pony is a coming-of-age story focused on two young Oglala Lakota men growing up on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. There’s Bill (Jojo Bapteise Whiting), a 23-year-old father of two struggling to make ends meet. We follow him as he tries to find various ways to make money, from breeding poodles to doing errands for a local turkey farmer. Then there’s 12-year-old Matho (LaDainian Crazy Thunder), who is a meth dealer and much older than his years.
Neither Keough nor Gammell has first-hand experience of growing up on a reservation, however, they co-wrote the script with Pine Ridge residents Franklin Sioux Bob and Bill Reddy and worked closely with members of the community. The result is a compelling film which portrays the lives of Native Americans in modern society with a gritty, harsh realism and shines a light on their perspective in a way I had never seen before.
This film has a relaxed pace and loose storytelling style and isn’t interested in telling a grand tale – it just wants us to observe their lives. It is so grounded and realistic that it feels almost like a documentary. Some might argue that not much happens here but I think there’s plenty going on. The two intertwining stories are interesting and come together in a sweet way that leaves us with a sense of hope.
Whiting and Thunder are first-time actors and they are at ease in front of the camera. They are so natural that it didn’t feel like I was watching actors. Whiting’s Bill is always hustling and trying to come up with ways to make more money, while Matho is often abandoned by his family and goes off the rails and turns to drugs to make ends meet.
It’s easy to see why War Pony won the Camera d’Or for best first feature at Cannes last year. It’s an assured debut and I can’t wait to see what Keough and Gammell do next.
In cinemas from Friday 9th June