The horse and his boy

Andrew Haigh makes inaction films. Weekend (2011) tells of two young homosexuals getting to know each other in Nottingham. In the wintry marital drama 45 Years (2015) two old heterosexuals get to unknow each other in Norfolk. The canvases are miniature, the resonances crevasse-deep. His third film, Lean on Pete, brings a change of scene and scope. And volume. Hooves thunder. A fatal gunshot goes off. Ornery men bawl and holler. There is a devastating road accident, and a climactic act of hideous violence. It’s as if Haigh has contracted ’roid rage. What he’s actually done is get on a plane to Oregon to adapt a novel by Willy Vlautin.

Haigh is intrigued by the often silent space between two characters. Here the two characters are Charley Thompson (Charlie Plummer), a friendless and latterly homeless teenager, and a horse. The knackered old non-thoroughbred racer is, for reasons unexplained, called Lean on Pete, and Charley does lean on him for an emotional sustenance that humans cannot be relied upon to provide.

Chief among these is his father Ray (Travis Fimmel), a rackety lothario who cooks for a living but omits to stock his own fridge. The mother has long vanished. Charley is so uncertain of his domestic status that he asks his dad’s latest squeeze if he’s allowed a glass of water. He’s a good boy. He picks up litter. He doesn’t complain at his abandonment. He jogs. One day he jogs past a stable where an old crank called Del (Steve Buscemi) offers him shifts as a stable lad. There Charley buddies up with Lean on Pete, whose thrilling companionship plants a rare goofy smile on his sweet but impassive, defended face.

Del is another of Buscemi’s scowling, scrapping lowlifes — ‘sometimes I want to punch myself in the face if I see another horse’, he says.