Life is hard in Pine Ridge in South Dakota. In the reserve for American indigenous people, the average income per household is SEK 80,000 a year, unemployment is 89 percent and over half live below the poverty line. It is not often that this environment is represented on film, even more rarely based on the residents' own experiences.
One can understand why, it takes sensitivity not to fall into sentimentality, condescension or voyeurism. But debut directors Riley Keough and Gina Gammell manage to avoid it. Probably because they co-wrote the script with two members of the Oglala Lakota tribe, and then gave all the roles to non-actors who actually live in Pine Ridge.
The authenticity is palpable, the tonality akin to Chloé Zhao's "The Rider" and Larry Clark's "Kids". That is to say – painful, unpleasant and sore at the same time. In the center are two boys. Matho is a typical 12-year-old in many ways – he plays video games with his friends, has a bit of a crush on a girl in class and is fascinated by a book about magic formulas. But he differs from most 12-year-olds in that he is homeless and sells crystal meth to his classmates.
For Bill, who has left his teens, it's all about getting rich quick. He breeds poodles to peddle them dearly to older white women, because a quick Internet search says it's a watertight investment. Bill dreams big and therefore injures himself all the more when he falls. Structural poverty is everywhere.
"War Pony" is therefore careful to remind you exactly where Matho and Bill are geographically, culturally and historically. The distance between past and present is never clearer than when bison – a symbol of strength, power and survival – appear among dilapidated huts, dreary convenience stores and cars with hip-hop at the highest volume.
The confinement and powerlessness are so felt that when Bill violently fights back, you are on his side even though the consequences will take him even further away from the possibility of a decent existence.