Swoony Sunday Film Review: "On Swift Horses"
Daniel Minahan's new drama film is a beautiful and evocative--if at times overstretched--look at queer life and romance in postwar America.
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Warning: Full spoilers for the film follow.
I wrote a few days ago that Jacob Elordi is certainly having a moment, and it’s easy to see why this would be the case. He has true matinee idol good looks, and he excels at inhabiting characters who are both beautiful and tortured, which means that he was basically perfect for a film like On Swift Horses. Based on the novel by Shannon Pufahl’s novel, it primarily focuses on Jacob Elordi’s Julius, his sister-in-law Muriel (Daisy Edgar-Jones), and his brother Lee (Will Poulter), as well as, to a lesser extent, Julius’ lover Henry (played by Diego Luna). In one way or another, they all have to contend with the changes overtaking postwar America, particularly the era’s increasingly repressive views of queer sexuality.
Elordi is perfectly cast as Julius, a man for whom drifting is a way of life. Indeed, the film opens with him wandering a snowy Kansas road, making his way to visit his brother, Lee who is living with his soon-to-be fiancee, Muriel’s in the house she inherited from her mother. There’s an immediate bond between Julius and Muriel, who seem to understand one another more deeply than Lee does, in large part because they aren’t satisfied with the promises being made by midcentury America. They want something more than the suburban utopia that structures Lee’s desires and aspirations for his postwar life, even though it takes them both quite a long time to figure out just what it is they want and how to go about getting it.
From the beginning, then, Swift Horses sets up a nice narrative parallel between Muriel and Julius. While she has followed the path expected of a woman in postwar America–settling down with a man (though only reluctantly agreeing to marry him), she yearns for something more. This helps to explain why, upon arrival in San Diego, she bets on the horses at the racetrack, using knowledge she gleans from the customers at the diner where she works, thus amassing a tidy sum that she hopes to use to start a new life for herself. It also helps to explain why she has a dalliance with her neighbor Sandra (Sasha Calle) and flirts with yet another woman that she meets at the track and later encounters at a gay bar.
For his part, Julius also yearns for something that he can never quite attain, which helps to explain why is so often rootless. This makes sense, though. As a gay man, what place can he possibly have in a postwar world like the one that Lee imagines, one of happily-married couples living in tidy suburbs that have been carved out of pre-existing communities and pieces of property? Julius’ world, by contrast, is one of clandestine (and sometimes violent) encounters, poker games, and aimlessness. Elordi, with his unique brand of male beauty, allows us to see the haunted soul behind the drifter.
It’s only once Julius meets Henry that he really starts to understand that there might be something more for him than just clandestine encounters in the night and endless grifts and games of poker. There’s a potent chemistry between Elordi and Luna that crackles any time they are on-screen together, and it’s clear that sex for them both is not just a matter of pleasure, as important as that is. Instead, it’s a means of finding connection in a world that often has no place for people like them. This isn’t to say that the sex isn’t hot, because it is, but it serves a larger purpose than mere titillation. Moreover, there are also quieter intimate moments that allow these two men to just enjoy one another’s presence, shielded from the outside world and its hostility.
As he did in Babylon–and I have to admit that he was one of the few things I liked about that hot mess of a movie–Luna perfectly captures Henry’s desire for something beyond what he’s been given. Unlike Julius, who sees their gig spotting cheaters in a Las Vegas casino as a worthy end in itself, he always wants more. Again, though, it’s easy to see why this would be the case, since he is not just a gay man but also Mexican, which means that he is doubly subaltern in 1950s America. When he starts to reach for that which is beyond his grasp, the powers-that-be aren’t afraid to smack him down, with some racist insults thrown into the bargain.
I would also be remiss if I didn’t give Will Poulter some love. I love the way that Poulter so nicely slides into whatever role he’s asked to play. In Death of a Unicorn he was perfectly cast as a very irritating and bombastic dude-bro and, in this film he’s something quieter, even tragic. Lee is the type of man who really doesn’t want for much and, because his desires are so simple, he finds it almost impossible to really understand either his wife or his brother and their yearnings. Yet we’re not meant to see him as a villain; he’s just the wrong husband for Muriel and a loving but clueless brother for Julius. He’s not perfect, of course, and the film makes it clear that his belief in the relentless progress of America in the postwar housing boom is naive at best and carelessly cruel at worst, but we’re still led to understand him and feel at least a little sorry for him.
Now, as much as I enjoyed this film, I will say that I agree with other critics, who have argued that it is sometimes a bit too sprawling for its own good. Muriel’s story suffers the most from this, I think, for while I love what Edgar-Jones does with the role, she flits from one dalliance to the next, which means that none of them feel particularly captivating or meaningful. Then again, perhaps that’s the broader point about her arc: it’s not until the end that Muriel ends up finding some measure of satisfaction in her life (more on that in a moment).
Nevertheless, I was captivated by On Swift Horses. Among other things, it’s a reminder that many queer people were able to build lives for themselves, even in a period as repressive and outright dangerous as the 1950s. Muriel witnesses the little queer conclave that Sandra hosts her house, and she also has two key scenes in a San Diego gay bar and, while there is a brief moment when it seems as if a police raid is going to disrupt the proceedings, the threat eventually passes, an ephemeral but bracing reminder of just how much fear permeated the lives of queer people at midcentury, even those fortunate enough to live in a big city like San Diego.
In the end, though, Muriel leaves behind her dull and lifeless marriage to return to the home that she never wanted to sell. If she can’t make it in the city, then at the very least she’ll be able to live a life on her own terms, on the land that she owns and to which she remains tied. Julius’ fate is somewhat more ambiguous, for the film’s last image is of him riding off on a horse to reunite with his beloved Henry. It’s rather silly, to be sure, but it’s also touching in its own way. However, all kinds of questions remain. Will the two of them be able to rekindle what it was they had before, or will Henry once again pursue a different path, perennially dissatisfied and unwilling to settle for less?
There’s a power in such ambiguity and, as Julius rides off into the future, one can but hope that he’ll be able to forge a life with Henry that’s as satisfying and happy as the one Muriel has fashioned for herself.