La route sauvage

A film of quiet intensity. Charlie Plummer stands out as the wayward and sensitive young hero, and Buscemi is on good form.

At times the improbabilities mount and sentimentality creeps in. But from the school of Kes this is a powerful and poignant film.

If you think Andrew Haigh's Lean on Pete, adapted from the novel by writer-musician Willy Vlautin, is a boiler plate boy and his horse idyll, then go see National Velvet. Here is the story of an underclass teen, 15 year old Charley (Charlie Plummer), who happens on a summer job tending stables and horses that gives him purpose and edges him into adulthood with love and tragedy.

Set in the Pacific Northwest's Portland, the unsentimental dramatic adventure has encounters with his single father, Ray, and girlfriends like a married secretary who brings Ray enormous trouble. Charley experiences loving that can be violent and survival that is uncertain.

Better is his experience with horses and a sleazy owner, Del (Steve Buscemi), who shows him how to tend the horses and eat in a civilized fashion, as well as the underbelly of horse racing in the boonies. Del, a complex character of the rough and soft, leads Charley to his first big love, aging quarter horse Lean on Pete, on whom Charlie will lean for emotional support as long as fate allows. Absconding with Pete to keep him from the slaughterhouse leads Charley to parlous times and tragedy but toward salvation.

The first half is chockfull of small experiences with the underclass, each member of whom is struggling to survive but not without a few raucous interludes. Basically, however, life in trailers and moveable horse races frequently leads to grim futures.

As with any teen, breaking with parents and guardians is crucial to maturation, and Charley is no different. When he and Pete take off to find long lost Aunt Margy (Alison Elliot), the broad vista of the West, dramatically photographed by Magnus Jonck, beckons the wanderers and portends dramatic challenges, not the least of which are the desert and unscrupulous adults.

Yet, listening to Charley confide about his life to Pete as they amble to the future is one of the film's understated delights. Like the film itself, we can exult in Charley's independence while fearing for his physical and mental safety.

As a youthful representative of a vulnerable class, Charley brings hope from his travels. Like a Steinbeck wanderer, he trudges to a problematic future as he builds on his brief but illuminating early-life experiences.

Just listen to the Bonnie Prince Billy cover of R. Kelly's "The World's Greatest" over the credits to catch his melancholy present and future, no longer leaning on Pete for survival.

When I first heard about British director Andrew Haigh's ("45 Years") Lean on Pete, it sounded like a warm, cuddly drama about horses, perhaps an updated version of "The Black Stallion." The film, however, as I quickly discovered, is not about horse racing or even about horses. It is an odyssey of a 16-year-old boy (Charlie Plummer, "All the Money in the World") who becomes attached to a doomed horse and undertakes a desperate quest for support in a world that has suddenly left him alone, attempting to make sense of an America that has lost its moorings. Charley is, in poet John Banville's words, "all inwardness, gazing out in ever intensifying perplexity upon a world in which nothing is exactly plausible, nothing is exactly what it is," a boy without a past or a foreseeable future.

Based on a novel by Willy Vlautin and set in the Pacific Northwest, Charley lives with his single and much traveled dad (Travis Fimmel, "Maggie's Plan") who has come to Portland to work as a forklift driver. Unlike the quiet, polite Charley, Ray is blustery and macho, but there is no doubt about his love for his son, although he often leaves him alone. Abandoned by his mother as an infant, Charley's only other family is Aunt Margy (Alison Elliott, "20th Century Women") with whom he lost contact many years ago after she had a conflict with Ray over Charlie's upbringing.

Out jogging to acquaint himself with the neighborhood, the boy discovers a seedy looking racetrack and strikes up a friendship with a cynical, small-time horse owner who is not averse to cutting ethical corners to make a living. Earning a few dollars by assisting Del (Steve Buscemi, "The Death of Stalin"), and jockey Bonnie (Chloë Sevigny, "Beatriz at Dinner") doing odd jobs around the track, Charley forms a bond with one of Del's disposable horses, a five-year-old quarter horse named Lean on Pete whose normal position in a horse race is dead last.

The worldly-wise Bonnie tells him, however, not to get attached to any horse saying that they are not pets, a truth that Charley realizes when he observes horses at the end of their racing days being shipped to Mexico to discover what a slaughterhouse looks like. Charley's world turns dark when his dad is severely beaten by the husband of one of his girlfriends and he is forced to earn enough money to keep up the household. As Ray's condition worsens, and Lean on Pete is slated to be sent to Mexico, Charley steals the horse in Del's truck in the middle of the night and takes to the road, seeking to find his way to Wyoming to look for Aunt Margy, without knowing anything about her whereabouts.

After Del's ancient truck breaks down, cinematographer Magnus Nordenhof Jønck ("A War") keeps us close to the sagebrush and flatlands of Eastern Oregon as the boy and his horse (to whom he confides his innermost thoughts) travel together on foot, coming into contact with both the hard working underclass of American society and the dregs who prey on the innocent and trusting.

As Charley moves from town to town, half-starving and disheveled, a child grasping onto any means to stay alive, he is forced into taking revenge on Silver (Steve Zahn, "Captain Fantastic"), a homeless man who steals his money in a drunken rage, but it is only one in a series of incidents that test his mettle and define who he is. A feeling of sadness pervades Lean on Pete, yet, like life, it is always filled with the possibility of renewal.

Charley's struggle to fit in a world that no longer welcomes him mirrors our own longing to connect, to find someone to care about and care for, to discover, as poet Carl Sandburg put it, "a voice to speak to us in the day end, a hand to touch us in the dark room, breaking the long loneliness." It is Charlie Plummer's beautiful and subtle performance that carries the film and grants us access to our own innermost experience of what it means to feel isolated in a world that we can no longer call our home.

Athough the title of the movie gives us something soft and nice, be ready to deal with the cruelty of the real life. It is really a nice story, but for someone more than heavy for his/her expectations. Director Andrew Haigh showed us mainly how looks life of American underclass, what isn't what we can see in some profitable and big budget movies. The young actor, Charlie Plummer, gives us the picture of a good acting and what to say more than that he is the best of all other members in that cast. A natural gift to be a good actor.

"Lean On Pete" (2017 release from the UK; 121 min.) brings the story of Charley. As the movie opens, 16 yr. old Charley, who lives with his dad in Portland, Oregon, is doing his morning jog, passing Portland Downs. Although Charley doesn't have any prior experience, he is drawn to the wold of horses. By happenstance, Charley gets an opportunity to assist Del, a veteran in the horse racing business. One of the horses Del has is called Lean On Pete. Then one evening, Charley's dad is wounded critically in a fight (we're not sure what the fight is actually about), At this point we are 10 min. into the movie but to tell you more would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out,

Couple of comments: this is the latest movie from British writer-director Andrew Haigh, whose previous film was the equally excellent "45 Years". Here, he brings the novel of the same name by Willy Vlautin to the big screen. I have not read the book, so I cannot comment to what extent (if any) the movie diverges plot-wise from the original book. As for the movie itself, I need to be quite careful as this is a plot-heavy movie. All I will say is that if you think the movie is mostly about the bond that grows between Charley and the horse, you are quite wrong. Rapidly up-and-coming Charlie Plummer (he played the kidnapped Getty in the recent "All The Money In the World") carries the movie on his young shoulders (he is in virtually every frame of the movie). Steve Buscemi is solid as Del, and Chloe Sevigny has a small role as Del's unsentimental jockey Bonnie.("they're not pets, Charley, they're just race horses"). The movie's wide open photography is eye-candy from start to finish. But in the end, this is all about Charley's story, and simple at that level, "Lean On Pete" is bound to break your heart, as you ache for Charley in his quest for a better future.

"Lean On Pete" premiered at last Fall's Venice Film Festival to immediate critical acclaim (with Plummer winning "Best Young Actor"), and it recently opened at my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati. The Sunday early evening screening where I saw this at was not attended well (5 people, including myself), although I'm guessing the 75 degree weather had something to do with that. Or it may be that hopefully this movie will find a wider audience on other platforms beyond the movie theater. Regardless, if you are in the mood for an excellent character study of a young man in search of a better life, I'd readily recommend you seek this out, be it in the theater, on VOD, or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray, and draw your own conclusion.