CFF review: THE WANTING MARE is an audacious debut with an incredible behind-the-scenes story

The Wanting Mare is a film that feels tailor-made for our current quarantined times. Written and directed by Nicholas Ashe Bateman, this is a subdued fantasy tale filled with beautiful vistas of a world not that different from our own, a feat made all the more incredible given that the film was shot entirely in a warehouse in New Jersey.

In the world of Anmaere, horses are an extremely valuable commodity; the citizens of the city of Whithren export them to Levithen, a land in a constant state of winter. To the densely populated inhabitants of Whithren, Levithen offers the hope of escaping their hand-to-mouth existence. The only way to make the journey to Levithen is via a horse-pulled train, and tickets to the annual trip are extremely rare and valuable.

Against this backdrop, we encounter three generations of women who are able to pass down a dream to each other, imprinting knowledge of the “world before” for them to carry on. The film opens with a dying mother imparting the notion of the dream to her baby daughter Moira, who we then meet as an adult (Jordan Monaghan). Living in a dilapidated industrial building, Moira meets Lawrence (played by the film’s writer/director Nicholas Ashe Bateman), who has been badly injured during an attempted robbery. After nursing him back to health, a relationship forms between the two of them, which becomes even more complicated when Lawrence appears cradling a baby one day that he discovers on the rocks. Decades later, we meet an adult Eirah (Yasamin Keshtkar), who is also trying to escape to Levithen as Moira was, and an older Lawrence (Josh Clark), trying to make amends for his actions decades earlier.

The Wanting Mare is a balm in these times; with many of us stuck indoors, the film is packed with incredible vistas of Anmaere that show off the massive scope of Bateman’s world, but the film really comes to life when you learn about the film’s creation. Bateman filmed The Wanting Mare over five years, raising money from an Indiegogo campaign and filming the entire movie in a huge storage facility. Learning that after watching the film is like discovering that Lawrence of Arabia was actually filmed in a parking lot. Bateman learned how to create digital effects during the course of putting the film together, and the hundreds of special effects shots in a film of this size and budget are simply staggering.

Understanding how the project came together is a helpful way into this beguiling film, but it may not be enough for those looking for a deeper understanding of the world Bateman took such lengths to put on-screen. We encounter very few characters over the course of the film, and many of those interactions are only fleeting moments. And while the many screensaver-worthy images are very evocative, it’s still hard to ever feel truly rooted in this world, especially given the major time-jumps throughout the course of the film.

The Wanting Mare was executive-produced by Shane Carruth (Upstream Color), and the influence of Carruth’s intricate and obtuse filmmaking style is definitely present here. More of a tone poem than a straight-forward narrative, The Wanting Mare offers a tantalizing glance at a mythology that Bateman will hopefully get the chance to explore further down the road. In the meantime, this is a visual feast of a film with some subdued yet riveting performances; it might not amount to a cohesive whole, but it’s an incredible achievement nonetheless.

The Wanting Mare is screening as part of the online-only edition of The Chattanooga Film Festival, running from May 22-25 (U.S. viewers only). Passes are available via the official CFF site. Stay tuned for more reviews from the festival in the coming days.