THE WANTING MARE: Tone and Colour in Service of Anti-Fantasy
When succeeding within niche fantasy storytelling, one key element has to be done justice: worldbuilding. What sets the most memorable novels and films apart is the attention and focus put into crafting immersive worlds for their epic narratives to play out in. When money is no object, a filmmaker has the freedom to compose magnificent set pieces and have the camera record the exquisite detail and splendour of the universe conjured to service the story. Even the narrative itself benefits immensely when the characters can make detours from their main quests. Not to mention they can teach the viewer about the intricacies, unique mechanics and the history of their universe.
But what if the artists’ pockets are not lined with dollars? Should they be discouraged from pursuing their dreams? Is fantasy filmmaking a hobby for the rich and privileged? For those fortunate enough to have secured multimillion-dollar budgets and studio backing? Of course not. As the adage goes, necessity is the mother of invention. Nicholas Ashe Bateman, together with his cohorts, realised their dream of making an independent fantasy which wouldn’t have to wear its campiness on its sleeve. It would be like a microbudget horror movie. This necessity translated into abandoning traditionally understood worldbuilding and inventing a substitute.
The Wanting Mare opens with a title card suggesting the film aspires to be a work of fantasy with its cursory exposition involving alien-sounding locales and an enigmatic shred of mythology upon which the narrative is likely to be hung. However, instead of a well-described, granular and coherent universe, the story takes place in a world deliberately obscured from the viewer. Hidden in the shadows, out of focus from backgrounds and between the lines of dialogue, the world of Nicholas Ashe Bateman’s film is purposefully ambiguous and vaguely sketched out. It trusts the audience with its interpretation.
Interestingly, the viewers are not left completely on their own in the quest to find bearing in this murky world of dangerous smugglers. However, the tools they are given are unorthodox. To attune to the film’s thematic and narrative frequency, they too must abandon their own preconditioned expectations of how a work of fantasy needs to be received. Not only is the expected worldbuilding nowhere to be found in here, the viewer is asked to squint their eyes a little and purposefully blur their own vision even more. This is because it ultimately doesn’t matter what the world of The Wanting Mare looks like. What counts is how it makes the audience feel and how it connects with them subconsciously.
This is accomplished through frequent use of handheld photography with shallow depth of field. The world and the story, as depicted through Bateman’s lens, is purposefully lacking detail. Of course, this is a natural knock-on effect of extreme budgetary limitations, but it bolsters the film’s mission as an antithesis of fantasy. Contrary to the expected archetype, it doesn’t really matter what the world of Whithren looks like. In addition, it is completely inconsequential to the overall experience whether the main characters’ quests come to fruition or not. What matters is how this world feels. Bateman’s shaky and immediate cinematography full of blown-out colours, murky shadows and blurry backgrounds conveys this notion quite successfully. Only characters, specifically their faces, remain in constant focus, drenched in the hues of artificial light, or partially drowning in shadows.
However, their quests to get a ticket to the mythical land on the other side of the ocean are not important either. Bateman isn’t interested in advancing the plot or obsessing over minutiae of their journey half as much as he is interested in relaying their emotional state. This is surely going to raise a few eyebrows and catch the viewer unawares because such an iconoclastic approach is scarcely encountered. This strange cultural shock is roughly comparable to what would happen if an impressionistic painter attempted to put his own spin on Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam. Gone will be detailed brushwork conveying the magnitude and scale of the scene; it will be obfuscated by broad strokes full of raw emotion. While some would – perhaps rightly! – lament at the abandonment of technical virtuosity, such an experiment would be a valid endeavour with its own artistic merit.
Even though it might one day sharpen up and evolve into one, if Bateman gets to continue his saga, The Wanting Mare is not a fantasy of the Tolkien-esque kind. In fact, it is best described as an impressionistic anti-fantasy in this regard. Instead of scale and scope, Bateman’s film offers mood and reflection. It has more in common with Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts Of The Southern Wild, Jonathan Glazer’s Under The Skin and Spike Jonze’s Where The Wild Things Are rather than The Lord Of The Rings or The Chronicles Of Narnia. Most importantly, however, it proves rather conclusively that conjuring tactile universes isn’t a preserve of big studio projects. Nevertheless, appreciating these alternative takes on archetypal modes of storytelling will require the viewer to do some legwork as well. After all, the filmmakers have gone through hell to birth this movie, so tilting one’s head, squinting a bit and opening one’s mind to an impressionistic perspective is not too much to ask, is it?
