Mark Reviews Movies: MONTANA STORY

Montana Story, Bleecker Street

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 12, 2022

At a turning point in Montana Story, the sister tells her brother that, at one time, she bought into the myth of the Big Sky of their home state. As they stand below that serene blue, one can understand the appeal. In front of the siblings, there's a massive crater. It's what's left of a quarry that was once the source of their family's success and is now evidence of their familial disgrace—a giant wound in the mountainous landscape that will remain open, simply because filling it would take too much unnecessary work.

Standing there, they could look at the hole in the ground and all that it represents, or the two siblings could look at each other. That might be worse. There's another open wound here, but a hole in the ground, no matter how large, is incapable of expressing judgment or shame.

If the brother looks at the sister, he fears he'll see the former. If the she looks at him, the sister might worry that she won't see the latter emotion on her brother's face. Maybe, though, she fears too much that she will see it and, even more, what that will mean about how she has felt about him for seven years.

To look below or next to you is to see regret and resentment. Looking at the sky might be the best option, and that's the sad, lonely reality of co-writers/co-directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel's steady, sturdy, and stoic drama. The film tells a relatively simple story about two half-siblings, reuniting after many years at their childhood home. Their father has had a stroke, is now in a coma, and almost certainly will die in this condition in the immediate, near, or semi-distant future. Cal (Owen Teague) doesn't necessarily want to be there, but he has to be.

After all, this is his father—his dad and his old man. That father is alone—twice a widower, with a younger son who has moved to the city and an elder daughter who left one day, never to return or call or give him a second thought, for all the father knew or probably cared before he ended up unconscious. The family estate is in bankruptcy, and Cal has to sell the farm and everything else, just to afford to keep his father alive for however long the old man will last.

That's the setup here, and without knowing a thing about these characters and their pasts and their relationships, McGehee and Siegel tells us just about everything we need to know about Cal's feelings toward his father in a series of movements. He arrives at his childhood home, greets his father's live-in nurse Ace (Gilbert Owuor), goes upstairs to his room, sits for a moment, goes downstairs, and passes the study where his father is connected to monitors and a ventilator with barely a glance in his direction. That's it for a while, until the characters gradually open up about what happened in this house and to this family over the years, but in a certain way, that sequence is all we really need to see and understand Cal, torn between obligation and not wanting much to do with his father.

There's a lot of that subtle, unspoken storytelling in this film, which says a lot through gestures and what isn't said. Meanwhile, the performances—especially the central two—contain so much quiet weight and emotional nuance as to suggest an entire world of interiority within and between these characters. Who needs explanatory dialogue or conflict-and-complication-heavy plotting, when the silences speak volumes and the bond between two fundamentally good but deeply wounded people is at stake?

Cal's sister is Erin (Haley Lu Richardson), who did leave home for places unknown and an uncertain fate one day seven years prior. She comes to the family home after receiving a call from Valentina (Kimberly Guerrero), who worked on the farm until financial difficulties struck. That she knew where Erin was living and how to contact her is just another heartbreak for Cal, who didn't know either piece of information—or anything else about Erin and her life now.

Erin has arrived to see her father one last time, but unlike Cal, there's a certain tenor in the way she speaks of this visit and her intentions. There's no sense of obligation here, except, perhaps, to herself—an obligation to make sure the old man is actually going to die. She's ready to leave that same day, but Cal informs her that the family's old horse is going to be put down tomorrow. Erin decides to stay longer and, then, to find a way to get that horse back to her home.

The remainder of the story simply observes this relationship, which has become estranged for reasons that both of them know but neither is willing to say to the other. Cal does tell Ace that story—of how his father, an attorney, betrayed the community's trust and then, when Erin learned about that, destroyed that relationship with violence. Cal was watching. Erin saw him seeing. The rest is what we witness here, as both siblings try to work up the courage to say what needs to be said. If that's possible, they hopefully can find the strength to react as their relationship was once and could be again.

This story is sound, and its telling is as relaxed as an intrastate drive on a lovely day, like the one that finally allows the tension between the siblings to break. The filmmakers and cinematographer Giles Nuttgens, filming naturally on location in Montana (naturally), accentuate the beauty, stillness, expansiveness, and starkness of the landscape in such a way that it complements the sparseness of the narrative and the richly discreet characters.

The tale is primarily compelling, though, because it focuses on these characters and the slight but perceptible evolution of their relationship. Much of that can be credited to the naturalism and specificity of the performances from Teague and Richardson, who imbue each moment alone and together with their characters' respective and collective burdens. They're great in Montana Story, a patient film about pain as deep as a quarry and hope at least as big as that sky.

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