'Lean on Pete' is a tale of a boy and his horse
At its simplest, 鈥淟ean on Pete鈥� is about a boy and his horse. Writer-director Andrew Haigh, adapting a novel by Willy Vlautin, has a principled reticence that serves the story well. I was afraid at first that I would be watching a sobfest. I needn鈥檛 have worried. Nothing very grand is being attempted here, but there鈥檚 a core of feeling to what we are witnessing that keeps the sentimentality in check.
Fifteen-year-old Charley Thompson (Charlie Plummer) has recently relocated with his itinerant single father, Ray (Travis Fimmel), to Portland, Ore. It鈥檚 summer break from high school, and Charley, wanting to do more than mope about, begins to frequent the local quarter horse track. A scruffy trainer and owner, Del Montgomery (Steve Buscemi), gives the boy part-time work cleaning the stable and transport trailer where Del houses his horses, and pretty soon Charley has bonded with Lean on Pete, a 5-year-old quarter horse who has seen better days (and even those days were none too good).
Haigh initially appears to be priming us for a generic fable about a lonely boy who befriends a gruff but kindly father figure, discovers his equine soul mate, and wins the racing sweepstakes. Thankfully, it doesn鈥檛 quite work out that way. Del may harbor a grudging sympathy for the boy, but he鈥檚 also a cheater who, with his accomplice and jockey, Bonnie (Chlo毛 Sevigny), juices his horses with 鈥渧itamins.鈥� When the horses stop winning, they get unceremoniously transported to Mexico 鈥� i.e., they get sold for horse meat.
This is the predicament that Charley and Pete find themselves in. When a violent turn of events renders Charley essentially homeless, he attempts to rescue both Pete and himself by taking to the road. He hopes to find his way to Wyoming, where a fondly remembered aunt lives whom he has not been in touch with for years.
Haigh is British, and his outsider鈥檚 eye probably accounts in part for the film鈥檚 lyrically askew vision of working-class fringes 鈥� the trailer homes, run-down fairgrounds, and homeless encampments. Once Charley and Pete hit the road, the vistas open up, and yet the effect is more stifling than expansive. In the vast countryside, the pair seem closed in by their aloneness, and their serial misadventures only emphasize their vulnerability. Charley continually seeks to reassure Pete by saying to him, 鈥淒on鈥檛 worry; it will be OK,鈥� but he could just as well be talking to himself.
Pete is rather knobby and distracted-looking, and Haigh doesn鈥檛 attempt to frame him in a heroic light. In classics like 鈥淭he Black Stallion鈥� or 鈥淣ational Velvet,鈥� horse and rider are spiritually aligned. 鈥淟ean on Pete鈥� is far more modest. The movie is really about Charley and his attempt to hold on to his youth even as it is being rudely wrested from him by the rough circumstances of his life. His road trip is a series of comeuppances, starting with his disillusionment with Del and extending to an interlude with some knockabout war veterans and then with a homeless man (Steve Zahn), who is as kindly when sober as he is enraged when drunk.
Plummer made a sharp impression last year as John Paul Getty III in the misbegotten 鈥淎ll the Money in the World,鈥� and, in a very different vein, he impresses here again. He鈥檚 playing a kid who at first seems gangly and awkward, but he has a wariness that allows him to persevere. He鈥檚 deceptively resilient.
Buscemi鈥檚 performance is likewise marvelous. In his scenes with Charley, there鈥檚 a lifetime of scrounging and connivance reflected in Del鈥檚 gimlet eyes. (Buscemi can also be seen, as Nikita Khrushchev, no less, in the recent terrific political satire 鈥淭he Death of Stalin.鈥� What a versatile actor he is!)
Haigh, whose previous films include the touching gay romance 鈥淲eekend鈥� and the resonant marital drama 鈥�45 Years,鈥� works in the same intuitive, humanist tradition as Kelly Reichardt, the director of such films as 鈥淐ertain Women鈥� and 鈥淣ight Moves.鈥� 鈥淲endy and Lucy,鈥� her 2008 movie about a young woman and her dog, set partially in the outskirts of Oregon, probably influenced 鈥淟ean on Pete.鈥� Like Reichardt鈥檚 films, Haigh鈥檚 sometimes drift off into a desultory nothingness, but he has a real feeling for people 鈥� not to mention horses. At his best, he can strike more emotional notes from silence than most directors can with a full chorus of sound.聽Grade: B+ (Rated R for language and brief violence.)
