‘War Pony’ Review: The Sad Absurdities of Reservation Life

The Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, house to the Lakota-Sioux, has one of many highest poverty charges and shortest life expectations within the United States. Over 80 % of adults are unemployed. “War Pony,” a stellar debut from Riley Keough and Gina Gammell, written in collaboration with two of its residents, Franklin Sioux Bob and Bill Reddy, has each proper to be a livid tragedy.

Instead, it’s a slacker comedy that swaps punchlines for laid-back, lived-in absurdities. The jokes land so feather-light you’re unsure in the event you ought to snort. Likewise, the characters barely register the movie’s bigger social criticisms — they only take their lumps and get on with issues. As Sioux Bob advised The Associated Press shortly earlier than “War Pony” received the Caméra d’Or at Cannes, “All this outlandish stuff you see in the movie, that was Tuesday.”

The story follows 23-year-old Bill (Jojo Bapteise Whiting), who has fathered two toddlers with two girls, one in all whom he has left languishing in jail for lack of a $400 bail. “I don’t have time for this,” Bill huffs. In fact, he’s received nothing however time. The complete movie, the truth is, exists in a temporal blur, the type of sunny, shiftless inertia the place it’s unclear if the Halloween decorations have been put up early or by no means put away in any respect.

Bill has no prospects on the yawning horizon aside from a obscure scheme to promote purebred poodles. (He doesn’t even personal a canine.) And then there’s 12-year-old Matho (LaDainian Crazy Thunder), who’s stoked to start out hawking his father’s meth. (“Pleasure doing business with you and your donkey!” he beams at a buyer.)

The queasy fact is that Bill is extra involved about his hypothetical puppies than his precise youngsters, however Whiting, sporting his personal tattoos, holds the digicam’s consideration so effortlessly that we’re rooting for him anyway. The viewers likes him higher than each different character does, together with his exes who’ve moved previous exasperation to apathy. Whether Bill is a villain or a sufferer relies on his framing — and “War Pony” refuses to take a facet.

Here, opposites coexist. Horses share the road with beat-up junkers. Lakota elders chant blessings over conked-out social gathering ladies. Kids adorn ball caps with eagle quills whereas lure music harmonizes with buzzing crickets. Above all, the group, performed nearly totally by first-time actors, is sort of actually a supportive tribe, even because the households and houses inside it disintegrate, reconfigure themselves, and disintegrate once more.

None of this appears humorous, however as seen via Bill’s deadpan gaze, it’s, reminiscent of when he goes off the reservation and crosses paths with a rich housewife who cheerily asks, “So you got any holiday plans this year?” And each time the movie appears unsure of its subsequent transfer, a bison or deer reveals up onscreen — a magician’s distraction disguised as symbolism — that’s, till the final sequence, when an animal-centric prank rewrites a web page of American historical past.

War Pony
Rated R for underage ingesting, drug use, cursing and carousing. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. In theaters.