Cinema Review: Lean on Pete


Posted May 4, 2018 in Cinema Reviews

Director: Andrew Haigh

Starring: Charlie Plummer, Steve Buscemi, Chloë Sevigny

Released: May 4

Without a risk, without anything at stake, running is reduced to an exercise in delaying the inevitable halt and grind to a life of stasis and boredom. There’s a scene at the beginning of Andrew Haigh’s Lean on Pete where Charlie (played by Charlie Plummer), the young protagonist who has learned to accept little and ask for less, goes running at dawn in the quiet nowhere of Portland’s outskirts. He stops when he sees a horse track being opened and quickly becomes enthralled by the uninhibited speed of the horses.

He convinces Del (Steve Buscemi) to take him on as a kind of assistant in running the horses, who grudgingly agrees and assigns Pete, a quarter horse, to Charlie. The relationship between the two quickly intensifies, and, though warned by rider Bonnie (Chloe Sevigny) to not get attached to the animal, Charlie goes ahead and connects his heart to Pete’s, rejoicing when he wins, sulking when he loses, and becomes increasingly anxious about the horse’s future beyond the race track.

Meanwhile, things at home unravel as Charlie’s father is violently attacked by the husband of a woman he’s been seeing. When Charlie returns home and sees broken glass, a space robbed of its former safety, he understands that home is no longer home. Slowly, Charlie realizes he is surrounded by regret; there is Del, who laments the loss of his youth, his love for horses; and Bonnie, rueful of the life she’s led, of the world she’s in. Repeated throughout in varying tones of despondency is a mantra of bleak acceptance; Charlie is advised to roll over and let life bury him alive. Where the film really finds its footing is in examining and then rejecting such dull outlooks.

The film punishes those who do not throw off the trap they were born into, and it rewards steady perseverance, conveyed by Charlie Plummer with measured boldness. There is no gallop into a setting sun, no liberation in riding on horseback into a new life. When Charlie takes Pete with him on his quest for a better life, he walks.

Words: John Vaughan

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