I got the chance to see Martin McDonagh’s newest film, Wild Horse Nine, at this year’s Venice Film Festival, where it absolutely brought the house down. His new film is absolutely hysterical and features a potential career-best performance from the legendary John Malkovich. It is also his saddest film, which is saying a lot.
Let’s take a look at why, with spoilers ahead.
What John Malkovich’s Character Thinks About His Life
Our film begins with CIA agents Chris (Malkovich) and Lee (Sam Rockwell) being dispatched on a mission to Easter Island, where Chris bonds with Chilean university students. There, he informs them of the Government coup in their country that is to come within a few short months that the CIA actually had a hand in.
Throughout the film, Chris utilizes his old age to get away with things that, for all intents and purposes, he should have no business talking about. His memory is starting to fade, and he’s also dying from cancer, but he mostly remains lucid enough to know when he’s messing with both his business partner and best friend, Lee, as well as the powers that oversee them.
Lee’s major piece of backstory is that he was actually the man who shot and killed JFK as part of a CIA government conspiracy. As you may expect, even though this film takes place in the early 70s, Chris is experiencing some serious guilt about his involvement in an event that did a ton of damage to the country and the world at large. This compounds through his general disdain for his overall legacy, which seems built around doing dirty work for an organization that doesn’t care if he lives or dies, and has contributed so much destruction to the world.
He reflects upon his life with all of the wit and charm that you would expect from both Malkovich and McDonagh, but in a way that feels uniquely devastating to our current world. Our society today seems more awake to government involvement in tragedy and atrocity both domestically and internationally, and yet despite our knowledge, there is a seemingly unprecedented level of powerlessness that comes with it. Chris, while a person in a unique position of power, embodies the sentiment of so many people today with grace, humor, and a deep level of empathy for the younger generation he hopes will do better than him.
McDonagh’s Transition Into Late-Career Filmmaking Sentiments
‘Wild Horse Nine’Credit: Searchlight Pictures
Martin McDonagh is only 56 years old, and he doesn’t seem like he’s retiring from filmmaking any time soon. What does seem clear with this film is that he’s starting to really ruminate on the final couple of decades of his life, and what that means in the context of his career. So many of our other great filmmakers have been making movies with this in mind over the past couple of years, but only McDonagh and Paul Thomas Anderson (who coincidentally is also 56 years old) have started doing so at an age as young as their mid-fifties.
Also, funnily enough, both Wild Horse Nine and One Battle After Another feel very thematically similar in the issues they tackle about the goals of different generations. One Battle feels a lot more outwardly hopeful about the future and the power that the younger generation has to be able to make a difference. Wild Horse Nine isn’t a hopeless kick in the teeth or anything, but its cynicism about what the world nowadays is up against isn’t unfounded in the slightest. There is one conversation with Malkovich and one of the Chilean university students in a car near the end of the film that is bound to spark lots of debate about its ethics in the current climate.
It also really begs the question of how McDonagh’s perspectives on the world will evolve in his coming films. The late-stage career perspective he has now is one we haven’t seen analyzed by filmmakers with as much longevity as he currently has, so I think it further cements him as one of the most exciting filmmakers working today.
The Film’s Awards Odds
Whether or not Wild Horse Nine is going to sweep wins across Awards seasons is up for discussion at a later time, as right now it’s just too early to tell. With that said, I think that between this film, Primetime, The Odyssey, and the upcoming Digger, we are bound to have at least one of the most exciting Leading Actor Oscar races in a very long time. If I had any authority on the subject, I would say that if we’re going on the quality of the performances alone, it’s Malkovich’s award to lose.
