‘The Montana Story’ Review: A Native Drama in Big Sky Country


Rethink the masterful genre “Montana Story,” where the American flag is not only waving and waving, but also sending a warning. It looks very modest. It flies from a long pole erected in front of a beautiful two-story house, clean and tidy, with frayed edges or discolored. There, on a 200-acre estate in southwestern Montana, in a majestic region surrounded by mountains known as Paradise Valley, nature beckons and relaxes you. It looks like heaven; it takes some time to see the rot.

Directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel don’t linger on the flag. Instead, they gently immerse you in a classic western setting and simultaneously draw you into a simmering family melodrama about two grown children grappling with each other and their terminally ill father. It was he who bought the family’s ranch many years ago and, with plenty of help, beautiful horses and unethical pockets – take on the role of the American cowboy. This archetype is critical to both his legacy and the film’s larger ambitions, which draw a line between one man’s legacy and the country’s full testament.

Winter is approaching when the youngest, Cal (Owen Teague), arrives at the farm in his truck. Lanky and in his early 20s have the limp limbs of a man who has not settled into his body and a name that evokes him.East of Eden”another domestic drama. Here, the family’s history is discreetly revealed, with visual clues and tense conversations that include red-alarm words like bankruptcy. Cal’s father, Wade (Rob Story), has had a stroke. In a coma and attached to a beating machine, she now lies in her study, cared for by nurse Ace (Gilbert Owuor) and maid Valentina (Kimberly Guerrero).

Despite the bad news and Cal’s scowl over unpaid bills, there’s a casually inviting, laid-back quality to this narrative table setting, entrances, neatly arranged genre elements, and places where pieces begin to slip. Part of the appealing, even serene, thing is that you think you’ve seen it before, if not in person. With its landscapes, small town, desolate farm, and dusty roads, Montana looks just what you’d expect. Beautiful, isolated, solid; it’s also a world, visually and morally, partly invented by Hollywood (and currently rentable through Airbnb).



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