Gladstone anchors lovely, meditative film
Lily Gladstone first garnered attention for her quietly affecting breakout role in Kelly Reichardt’s 2016 indie award winner Certain Women. She’s been back in the spotlight recently, thanks to Martin Scorsese, who cast her as Mollie, wife to Leonardo DiCaprio’s Ernest, in Scorsese’s highly anticipated upcoming adaptation of Killers of the Flower Moon. In between, Gladstone worked on several other projects (First Cow; Walking Out) and finally landed her first leading role in The Unknown Country, a beautiful, meditative film worthy of her talents.
The first feature film by director Morrisa Maltz, The Unknown Country premiered at last year’s South By Southwest Festival before playing other festivals and opening in limited release this summer, including showing here in Marin starting today. If you like smart, soulful indie films with sharply drawn characters and breathtaking scenery, you should journey to San Rafael to see this one.
Journey is the apt word here, as Maltz’s film follows Gladstone’s Tana as she travels both literally from Minnesota to Texas by way of South Dakota, and figuratively through her grief after the death of her beloved grandmother. Although Tana’s road trip to see family near the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and trace her grandmother’s footsteps in southwest Texas comprises the film’s throughline, Maltz also peppers the picture with standalone snapshots of other characters Tana encounters along her way.
“Everybody has a different story,” Pam (Pam Richter), a diner waitress says, as she begins to share a bit of her life with us. A motel owner, a convenience store clerk, an elderly woman enjoying a community center dance, and even Tana’s young cousin get a moment to open up to us. The effect of these interludes, especially in contrast to Tana’s solitary driving, is to remind us that even when we think we’re alone in the world, we aren’t: everyone we meet is unique, and each of us has experiences worth hearing.
Tana’s solo open road scenes are also just as absorbing. As a single Native American woman driving alone through the small, sparsely populated towns of middle America, Tana must always have her guard up, whether she’s getting gas after nightfall or stopping to watch a horse riding show during the day. A single man who pulls out behind her exiting a gas station and follows her for a bit may just happen to be going the same way… or he might be a threat. And a group of seemingly friendly men chatting her up during a small town event may be totally sincere… or they could have cruel intentions. A slightly unsettled score, the omnipresent talk radio Tana listens to while driving that reminds us of outside world stresses, and Gladstone’s ability to convey Tana’s unease all work to create a visceral level of tension comparable to a horror movie. Elements like these keep us fully engaged in a movie that is composed of many small, quiet, transfixing moments.
The landscape, too, becomes a character here, much in the same way it did in Nomadland, the film to which this picture bears a resemblance. Here cinematographer Andrew Hajek gives us sweeping views of the long, wide road and vast open spaces of the Badlands region and the southwest, bathed in dappled, natural light. The still beauty of these shots matches the poignant, evocative energy of the picture as a whole.
Maltz co-wrote the screenplay with Gladstone, Vanara Taing, and Lainey Bearkiller Shangreaux, who also appears in the film as Tana’s cousin Lainey. Many of the Native American cast, in fact, play themselves, in scenes where Tana returns to the Pine Ridge area for Lainey’s wedding to her fiance Devin (Devin Shangreaux).
While Gladstone delivers the strongest performance as the grief-stricken Tana, the supporting players shine in their small roles. Richard Ray Whitman, as Tana’s great-uncle, is tender and loving in a moving scene in which he reminisces about his sister (Tana’s grandmother) with Tana. And Raymond Lee (Quantum Leap; Top Gun: Maverick), as Isaac, a new friend Tana makes in Dallas, briefly brings sweetness and charm into Tana’s life, as well as into ours. Tana’s willingness to allow new people and experiences into her life, even as she grieves, enables her to experience connection and joy. As Maltz’s film expresses so eloquently, the door to a broken heart must remain ajar.
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The Unknown Country opens today at the Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael.
