Montana Story Review: A Well-Acted but Monotonal Elegy to Rapprochement

The film is initially distinguished by its poetic understatement, only for it to eventually succumb to staleness.

Montana Story
Photo: Bleecker Street

At first blush, the ranch house at the center of Montana Story looks and feels warm and inviting, but it isn’t long into Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s film that we sense that it’s a place that’s been thrown off its axis. Inside long-abandoned bedrooms, posters of trendy pop stars like Sky Ferreira hang on the walls. And in the center of the living room, a man, Wade (Rob Story), lies on a hospital bed, surrounded by an array of cold, antiseptic medical equipment. Instantly, the film conveys a sense of transformation beginning with the symbolic disruption of the old or traditional—of a home almost at odds with itself.

With Wade living out his days in a coma, his twentysomething son, Cal (Owen Teague), returns to his childhood home to settle the old man’s affairs and prepare the estate for sale. Though young, Cal has a haunted, withdrawn look in his eyes that suggests that he’s already endured much strife in his life. He bristles at being back on his father’s ranch but nonetheless capably goes through the motions of handling all the bills and preparation required of end-of-life consideration. Cal’s façade of calm crumbles, though, when he discovers that his long-estranged sister, Erin (Haley Lu Richardson), has also come home. Steely and composed up to this point in the film, Cal immediately devolves into stammering disbelief at this reunion.

The evocative sense of unease that pervades this family home is brought into even sharper focus by Erin’s arrival. The young woman, slightly older than her brother, immediately provides a contrast for Cal’s taciturn sense of filial duty. Where he can grit his teeth and bear his unpleasant feelings regarding his homecoming, she can barely bring herself to step foot in the house, and the sight of Wade nearly drives her from the ranch as quickly as she arrived.

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Across a series of sensitively acted, plaintively scored scenes, brother and sister attempt to reconnect, but doing so only works to open wounds that can be traced back to Wade’s abusiveness. Eventually, their circumspect approach to dealing with their shared trauma transforms into open accusation, particularly on the part of Erin, who holds her brother almost as responsible for the hell that she endured inside the house as she does her father.

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Though melodramatic, Teague and Richardson’s performances never devolve into histrionics. Throughout Montana Story, their characters speak through a believable filter of time’s passage that’s muted, but by no means erased, their shared history of pain and recrimination. Richardson keeps Erin’s most furious moments at the level of a strained hiss, almost as if she were denying her character the catharsis that a scream might provide. All the while, the underplayed emotions match the serene atmosphere of the azure skies and looming Rockies that surround the characters, hauntingly suggesting the implacable weight of the past.

By the same token, that leaves Montana Story feeling dramatically inert, especially as McGehee and Siegel dutifully parcel out revelations about the siblings and their father and build toward the possibility of forgiveness with no variations in tone or direction. It doesn’t help that the film’s attempts to show the multiculturalism present even in a “real” American countryside are ultimately stereotypical, as Wade’s Kenyan caretaker, Ace (Gilbert Owuor), and a local indigenous man (Eugene Brave Rock) are portrayed as fountains of spiritual wisdom. The film is initially distinguished by its poetic understatement, only for it to eventually succumb to staleness, gently tracing the rapprochement between its main characters but never offering the kind of dramatic payoff that makes the extended buildup initially worthwhile.

Score: 
 Cast: Haley Lu Richardson, Owen Teague, Kimberly Guerrero, Gilbert Owuor, Asivak Koostachin, Eugene Brave Rock  Director: Scott McGehee, David Siegel  Screenwriter: Scott McGehee, David Siegel  Distributor: Bleecker Street  Running Time: 114 min  Rating: R  Year: 2021  Buy: Video

Jake Cole

Jake Cole is an Atlanta-based film critic whose work has appeared in MTV News and Little White Lies. He is a member of the Atlanta Film Critics Circle and the Online Film Critics Society.

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