East of Wall: Mixing Documentary and Drama in America’s “New West”
By Chris Knight
Rating: A-
East of Wall, named for its setting near a tiny town in the badlands of South Dakota, is part documentary, part fictional narrative. I loved the documentary elements, which are plentiful. I wasn’t as taken by the overlay of scripted story. And I wasn’t always sure where one ended and the other began. Sometimes reality is all you need.
The action takes place on a 3,000-acre ranch owned by Tabatha Zimiga (actor and character share a name), a larger-than-life momma bear who makes ends meet by raising and selling horses, with the help of her rambunctious and strong-willed children, especially daughter Porshia. Mother and daughter share an open wound from the recent suicide of Tabatha’s husband, who wasn’t Porshia’s father but raised her like one.
In addition to several of her own kids, Tabatha takes in strays from parents who are incapable of looking after them due to addiction or incarceration of what-have-you. They might as well all be her kids. She looks after them as she does her horses, with a loving but no-nonsense attitude. (Watch her freak out after Porshia “borrows” her truck for a joyride.)
Tabatha’s hardscrabble life gets an economic lifeline with the arrival of Roy Waters (Scott McNairy), a relatively well-off Texas horse trader who offers to buy her ranch but also keep her and the family on to run it. He promises her that her life won’t change. She isn’t so sure.
Writer-director Kate Beecroft doesn’t seem certain what to do with a strong male character in the picture. I thought there might be sparks between him and Tabatha — nope. Then I worried he might be attracted to Porshia; thankfully no. He’s given a thin backstory in the form of a deceased daughter of his own, but there’s little else for the audience to know about him.
McNairy gets a lot of mileage out of this sketch of a character; he’s an undersung actor whose numerous awards are mostly for being part of great ensemble pictures like Argo or 12 Years a Slave. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention Jennifer Ehle, almost unrecognizable as Tabatha’s grinning, hard-drinking mother.
It’s been decades since her turn in the BBC’s Pride & Prejudice miniseries, and this role might have just knocked the last of that British stuffiness out of her, for the better.
Beecroft finds much beauty in what Tabatha calls “the new West” — horses and kids running wild and free, and astonishing shots of the badlands, which Porshia says in voiceover are what the bottom of the ocean would look like if it all dried up.
But the story tends to meander. A late-night gathering of women discussing the (often) terrible men in their lives plays like a writer’s clumsy attempt at creating a #MeToo moment. And the ultimate conclusion of Waters’ designs on the ranch feels tacked-on.
Still, there is much to enjoy here. East of Wall is Beecroft’s first feature, and I eagerly await her second — just please don’t let it be a Marvel movie. She captures so many little moments perfectly and just needs to trust herself to let the big moments take care of themselves.
East of Wall. Directed by Kate Beecroft. Starring Tabatha Zimiga, Porshia Zimiga, and Scoot McNairy. In theatres August 15.