WILD BEAUTY: MUSTANG SPIRIT OF THE WEST

Wild Beauty: Mustang Spirit of the West, Winterstone Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 11, 2023

With its scenic views of the vast landscapes of the American West and footage of wild horses freely roaming along those backdrops, the early moments of Wild Beauty: Mustang Spirit of the West seem to announce a certain kind of documentary. The title alone suggests some love letter to horses and their status as a symbol for some American ideal, but director Ashley Avis shatters such illusions in her opening narration. This is more a piece of on-the-ground investigative journalism than anything else, and it's an effectively infuriating one, too.

Avis knows and cares about horses, so while shooting a feature for a major studio, it came as quite a shock for her to learn that the status of wild horses across the West is in jeopardy. This simply could not be. Those horses are meant to be safeguarded by a federal law put in place in 1971, protecting them from "capture, branding, harassment, or death."

To cut to the chase, Avis obtains footage of wild horses being captured, branded, harassed, and killed, and the culprits are no less than a branch of the federal government itself. "It sounds like a conspiracy," Avis notes during that opening monologue, "because it is one."

The film does a lot with relatively little, in that the topic of wild horses initially feels like a niche one, even within the realm of environmental conservationism. Why are these horses so important, beyond the concept of them of a metaphor for the underlying value of freedom and some romantic idea of the West? It's their symbolic power, perhaps, that makes these creatures a perfect representative for what humanity is doing to nature.

There's a much larger conversation to be had about the role corporate interests, such as the large ranches that appear to have the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in their pocket to remove the horses for cattle and sheep grazing, have in the eradication of the natural world. The subject of horses might make the previously disinterested or skeptical rethink that position.

Using the language of the law and statistics and that harrowing footage of horses being round up by low-flying helicopters for captivity and/or slaughter, Avis makes two strong cases. First, these wild animals are worth protecting for a variety of reasons, which go beyond metaphor and environmentalism. Second, the BLM has either failed in its duties or become so corrupt that it is need of a complete overhaul.

The filmmaker doesn't take a position as to the reason the agency has shirked its legally mandated responsibilities toward the horses, because that's irrelevant. The consequences matter, and in Wild Beauty: Mustang Spirit of the West, Avis makes those results plainly and, at times, painfully clear. If people and institutions don't care about such an iconic representation of nature in this country, what hope is there for the rest of the natural world?

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