Holding the American West to Its Promises
In 'On Swift Horses,' Daisy Edgar-Jones and Jacob Elordi seek to carve out spaces for themselves in an uneven, queer two-hander.
In my welcome post, I pledged that this newsletter would feature “no listicles, no link roundups, no hasty reviews of the newest releases.” Perhaps that needs revision. You see, I tend to explore movies I’ve seen many, many times, but writing about a film before it’s been absorbed by the larger film-going public requires a slightly different skillset. I recently caught an advance screening of TIFF and Cannes selection On Swift Horses, so I decided to get some reps working a seldom used writing muscle. Beyond my Letterboxd activity, I haven’t written a review of a brand-new film in over 25 years. Giving it a go! I welcome your feedback, as always!
Daniel Minihan’s film adaptation of Shannon Pufahl’s 2019 novel On Swift Horses plunges us into a world starkly different from our hyper-connected present. Here, in the mid-20th century American West, communication is a precarious thing, time-and place-dependent. The film follows siblings-in-law who, in rejecting the promises of middle-class, suburban life, are left to toss bottled message after bottled message out to sea in hopes that not just someone, but someone specific, might find them. From tract homes and seedy motels, they send letters not to addresses but to post offices in towns where their loved ones are rumored to be; they cling to matchbooks, slipped into palms or left on bar tops, as potential clues to future whereabouts; and they tack handwritten, heartbroken pleas to the wall of liminal spaces as though they were missing posters: Have you seen...
Shifting focus between Muriel (Daisy Edgar-Jones), a Midwesterner who reluctantly marries Korean War-vet Lee (Will Poulter) and follows him to California, and Lee’s brother Julius (Jacob Elordi), an itinerant hustler, the film examines the ambiguous connection between two people who yearn for something beyond the prescribed paths of post-war America. Lee’s long-gestating plan is to fold his brother into his and Muriel’s household once they are on their feet, which the young woman seems to welcome. Julius promises to join them but instead turns tricks and hustles card rooms on his way to Las Vegas. Meanwhile, Muriel engages in some duplicity of her own, sneaking out to the horse races and hiding her sizable winnings from her penny-pinching husband.
Minihan, best known for directing episodes of prestige TV series like Deadwood and Six Feet Under, takes care to imbue both Muriel’s and Julius’s transgressions not as “character flaws” but as impulses towards freedom, especially with regard to secret desires and unacknowledged longings. It’s to his credit that the film manages to place these characters in new situations and capture the heady elation of stepping beyond superficial constraints, such as two characters hastily pushing a pair of twin motel beds together to form a king. (The film seems in spots to be in dialogue with Brokeback Mountain.) That electricity is in no small part owed to cinematographer (and frequent Sarah Polley-collaborator) Luc Montpellier, who seems to pour California sunshine through gauzy-curtained windows, bringing out a warm, tactile glow in the mid-century sets.
That’s not to say, however, that there aren’t significant missteps. Minihan has a tendency to telegraph some beats while resorting to overly emphatic visual cues in others, as if to say this is key. The protagonists’ respective romances are compellingly drawn, but the bond between Muriel and Julius is hastily and unconvincingly established. Is what animates their connection a matter of recognizing something of one’s self in the other, or is it more complex, more carnal? And in moments when On Swift Horses would be better served by subtlety, it overplays its hand. When Muriel and Lee shop for homes, Minihan draws our attention to a neighboring house that later will prove significant by prominently framing a sign in its yard not once, not twice, but three times in the span of a single scene. The movie has but two modes: under-baked or sign-posted within an inch of its life.
There is also an incongruity between the lead performances. Jones makes much of a tricky part: she is manifestly selfish (not that I blame her), given to falsehoods, not exactly discreet, and more than a bit careless with her husband’s heart, despite acknowledging his fundamental decency. And yet, Jones plays Muriel warmly and with empathy. Initially, Jones is all stiff shoulders and buttoned-up sweaters, but over time she gradually loosens, gradually breathes, mirroring Muriel’s similar easement. I’m struck especially by the scene where Muriel, readying herself in the bathroom, pulls back her hair and allows her bangs to fall over just one eye as she blows smoke rings from her cigarette – a gesture with a hint of Elvis cool and a flicker of the androgyny that draws her to her neighbor, Sandra (Sasha Calle). It’s a brief glimpse into the character’s interiority, a trying on of a mask, a granting oneself permission…
Elordi manages fewer such moments. Strapping presence though he is, he can’t seem to muster much in the way of gradation in his performance. He wears the same expression throughout the bulk of the film, mostly emoting through the chain-smoke. The cigarettes thus feel like a crutch, a pastiche of the stoic cowboy archetype. Whereas Muriel is fully-drawn, Elordi’s character is underdeveloped. When first we see him, he’s lying shirtless on the hood of a snow-encased car -- your guess is as good as mine as to why.
Owing perhaps to its source material, On Swift Horses fancies itself as saying something about the mythos and promises of the west: home ownership as linchpin of the American Dream, desert parties set against the spectacle of nuclear tests from the Nevada Proving Ground, and some rather ham-handed late use of horse and cowboy iconography. In that sense, as a film whose reach exceeds its grasp, it indeed reflects the aspirationalism and a sense of opportunity that the story dramatizes. But it also is aware enough of the precarity of it all, how the attainment of that dream hinges in no small part on luck: on the stars aligning, the 12-to-1 horse coming in, catching that ace at just the right time. And when the luck doesn’t materialize, then what?