Martin McDonagh loves space at the end of things. After The Banshees of Inisherin, the Irish director returns with Wild Horse Nine, presented in competition in Venice and earned a Volpi Cup in John Malkovich. Wild Horse Nine has been in Italian cinema since November 5 with The Walt Disney Company Italy.
Wild Horse Nine: ai confini del mondo
Chile, 1973: Chris Carlisle is a CIA agent stationed in Santiago. He had key roles in the government changes of a dozen countries and in an innumerable series of bad pastries on American soil, including one involving a precision rifle and a dead president.
The nearby Chilean coup will not be his business: he and partner Lee Chesterfield are leaving for a special assignment on Easter Island.
For Chris the mission is very simple: pull the sewings. Man has a terminal tumor, and the journey with his colleague is at the same time a final desire and an attempt to put distance and order in his turbulent past.
But their greedy head MJ may have a second purpose for sending them to the island, especially since Chris developed the unspeakable habit of not being able to keep his mouth shut on certain secret issues..
I confini della vita
To die is for everyone, but as long as we live, it is something that remains essentially alien to us. Here, Wild Horse Nine is a film about this alienity — or rather, between the absurdity between alienity and deep familiarity with death that can permeate the existence of a man at the ends of life. He is so hard with his characters as delicate in representing them, because he knows very well that it does not need to lime the hand. Avoiding, as usual McDonagh, condemnation but also absolution.
I confini del medium
An intimate film, therefore, but not only. The background of Chile pre-golpe, which in the hands of a less refined director could easily become an aesthetic mero token, is instead a very effective vehicle to make concrete some of Chris’ most abstract feelings. The violence in his past is before us, clearly visible and embodied: a rain with a thousand tentacles.
Great sense of the measurement also throughout the technical system: the film is very solid in its understatement, and this leaves the space necessary to what really counts: the performances. Sam Rockwell is a perfect, laconic and laminated coprotagonist. And John Malkovich is a guarantee even in the most dim role, here he has everything he needs to shine as he never shone.
Il cast
John Malkovich is Chris Carlisle, a CIA agent with a prominent role in mid-century revolutions. Sam Rockwell is his unreadable partner Lee Chesterfield, while Steve Buscemi plays their head MJ. Mariana Di Girolamo and Ailín Salas are Monica and Alicia, two young Chileans met on the island. Parker Posey also appeared in the role of Lee’s wife and Tom Waits in Chris’ brother.
L’articolo Wild Horse Nine and the boundaries of things – The review comes from Dituttounpop.it.
