Quiet 'Lean on Pete' speaks volumes
“Lean on Pete” - ★ ★ ★
There is painfully little love, except for the warm and compassionate filmmaking itself, in Andrew Haigh's tender and heartbreaking coming-of-age drama “Lean on Pete.”
Haigh, the British director of “45 Years” and “Weekend,” makes precisely tuned, quiet movies that speak volumes about their characters. Fittingly, it's the sound design that you notice first in “Lean on Pete.” In the opening scenes, 15-year-old Charley Thompson (Charlie Plummer) goes for a jog in his low-income Portland, Oregon, neighborhood, and the sounds of passing traffic and nearby machinery grate coarsely against Charley's easy breathing. It will be a long time before he can find peace.
Charley lives with his single father (Travis Fimmel), a jovial blue-collar guy who bounces from job to job. Charley's days, and some nights, are idle and lonely, with little to no food in the house.
Plummer, who played the kidnapped Getty grandson in “All the Money in the World,” gives a natural and crushingly sweet performance. His Charley is a meek, sheepish kid yearning for stability.
On one of his runs, Charley notices a nearby racetrack and is drawn to it. He meets the grizzled, ethically shabby horse owner Del (Steve Buscemi), who gives him a few bucks for an odd job. Charley asks if he needs any more help, eager to just stick around the horses.
Charley immediately takes to Del's oldest, least flashy horse: Lean on Pete, a five-year-old quarter horse. Del and his favorite jockey, Bonnie (Chloë Sevigny), caution him about growing too attached. Del is trying to squeeze a few more races out of Pete before selling him off. This is a horse racing world far from Churchill Downs, of hardscrabble courses, set off by ropes, with rampant cheating - at least for Del. “He's not a pet,” says Bonnie. “He's just a horse.”
It's a warning that could double for “Lean on Pete.” Haigh's film might appear a mushy, Disney-style tale of boy-meet-horse, but “Lean on Pete,” based on the novel by Willy Vlautin, is about a crueler world without room for sentimentality. Just as Charley is settling into life at the track, a violent tragedy upsets his already tenuous existence.
Charley steals Pete and sets out on a woeful odyssey through a seldom-seen America. Spanning Western plains and urban homeless shelters, the portrait of America in “Lean on Pete” grows increasingly harsh.
But it's less Haigh's mournful view of American society that makes the heartfelt “Lean on Pete” stay with you. It's Plummer's wounded, achingly alone Charley, humbly striving across a darkening land, holding on desperately.
<b>Starring:</b> Charlie Plummer, Travis Fimmel, Steve Buscemi, Chloë Sevigny
<b>Directed by:</b> Andrew Haigh
<b>Other:</b> An A24 release. At Chicago's Century Centre and Evanston's CineArts. Rated R for language and violence. 121 minutes