Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Montana Story’ on Hulu, a Smart, Contemplative Movie-for-Adults That They Really Don’t Make Anymore

Montana Story (now streaming on Hulu) essentially functions as a showcase for two up-and-comers: Haley Lu Richardson of The White Lotus and The Edge of Seventeen fame, and Owen Teague, who we saw in It and The Stand (and will lead the upcoming Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, playing a mo-cap chimp). Writer-directors David Siegel and Scott McGehee – notable for helping Tilda Swinton launch her career with 2001’s The Deep End – cast the young stars as estranged siblings reconvening at their family’s ranch to care for their dying father. It’s a bit of a morose wallow of a story, but it manages to set its hook with some gorgeous Montana scenery, and keep us there thanks to its leads’ thoughtful performances.

MONTANA STORY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: It’s a brisk, beautiful Montana morning. A few chickens scuttle around the yard and the horse shuffles its feet in the barn. You get the sense that this ranch has seen better days. It’s not quite in a state of disrepair, but there’s an air to it, an air of loneliness or despair, maybe, coloring its quiet beauty with melancholy. We learn soon enough that it’s the specter of death – Cal (Teague) parks his 30-year-old Ford Explorer on the frosty lawn and heads inside with furrowed brow. Inside, his father, Wade (Rob Story), is propped in a hospital bed in the den, unconscious, on life support. “He will not wake up,” is the sad truth shared by round-the-clock nurse Ace (Gilbert Owuor), who’s kind, softspoken. Valentina (Kimberly Guerrero) stands in the kitchen, looking worried. She’s worked for the Thorne family for years, and will have to pick up more shifts at the grocery store, although there aren’t many to go around. 

Cal looks over the paperwork, and it’s not good. Debt, bankruptcy, medical bills. The bank will liquidate the ranch and there will be nothing left of the place where he grew up. We learn his mother died a couple years ago, and his dad was never the same. Cal pushes his mom’s dusty Lexus out of the barn, gets it started and parks it roadside with a for sale sign in the window. Then he considers Mr. T: The horse is 25 years old; he’ll have to be put down. Then, without warning, a car pulls up. It’s Erin (Richardson). His sister. He hasn’t heard a peep from her in seven years. And the morose atmosphere suddenly becomes fraught with tension. Erin has no desire to explain anything. And asking if she’s OK and where she’s been and what she’s been doing – well, there are no openings for that. She has an edge to her. Simmering. Angry and impenetrable. 

Maybe it’ll come out eventually, Erin’s story, the What Happened that made her run away. She gets even angrier when she learns of Mr. T’s fate. She’s clearly more upset about the horse than her father. She cannot abide euthanizing the animal she loved so much as a kid, so she’ll just buy a truck and trailer and take Mr. T back to New York with her. Not the city – upstate. It still won’t be easy or inexpensive to find a place to keep the horse, but she’ll figure it out. Ace calls Cal into the room and shows Cal how to massage his father’s legs, how to lightly press his ankle to feel his pulse. It might be meditative if his feelings for his father weren’t so… complicated. Erin watches briefly. She can’t abide a show of kindness to her father, either. She saddles up Mr. T and goes for a ride, while Cal drops his father’s foot and starts talking. It spills out of him, like the cup that’s full and just can’t hold any more water. And Ace sits and listens, patiently. This is part of his job, too.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Montana setting brings to mind Tyler Sheridan’s rural corruption saga Yellowstone, or his film Wind River, if the thriller elements were left in the backstory for a more August: Osage County-esque family drama.

Performance Worth Watching: Richardson and Teague are very good, but I keep going back to Guerrero, whose nonverbals reflect a spate of mixed emotions about what’s happening with this family, and Owuor, who shows poignant serenity as the caretaker in the eye of the melodramatic storm. Is it a coincidence that the non-White characters show more grace and understanding than the White characters? Probably not. 

Memorable Dialogue: Mukki (Eugene Brave Rock) drops a bit of wisdom on Erin when she buys a horse trailer from him: “Funny thing about not remembering – you’re glad for it. Sometimes it gets you into trouble.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: With Montana Story, Siegel and McGehee employ a classic Narrative of Withholding, where implications of past events seep into scenes, building to a series of revelations of said past events, which are inevitably fateful and/or tragic. Sometimes the method feels contrived for dramatic impact, or for the indulgence of literary devices – symbolism and irony are big ones here, e.g., contrasting the potential euthanization of the beloved horse with the far less beloved father comatose on life support. But the execution reflects the uniformly strong efforts of veteran filmmakers who know how to create a consistent tone and an immersive atmosphere for both cast and audience to get lost in. The film’s moderate-to-slow pace allows the filmmakers to pay heed to the details of mood and setting, using carefully considered art direction, locations and music to fill in and layer the story with thematic implications. 

In other words, many band-aids in this sad family saga need to be ripped off. Credit Siegel and McGehee for not feeling the need to rip all of them off in two hours; they’re wise enough to imply that reckoning and reconciliation don’t happen over the course of a few days, or that closure – ever elusive, likely unobtainable, almost certainly a fallacy – is the ultimate destination. It’s not an exact depiction of reality, but it clings to the spirit of the trials of the human condition, stirring politics into a deeply personal story. Without giving too much away, I’ll reveal that Wade was an unethical lawyer whose shady dealings precipitated the decay of his family, home and psychological well-being. There’s also a racial dynamic at play here, an emphasis on the roles of Native Americans in the rural community that prods us to piece together disparate elements of the story into a big-picture saga of greed, power and exploitation. 

So the film is very intensely American in the margins of this contemplative domestic melodrama. It kept me in thrall and put me in a reflective mood. There are moments when the material seems ever so slightly beyond the reach of Richardson and Teague’s limitations as actors, but their performances are strong enough to generate empathy, to nonverbally communicate Erin and Cal’s struggles to reckon with the fallout of their childhoods. The actors put in the work to build their characters, Siegel and McGehee put in the work to build this setting, and if you put in the work to reflect upon what you see and hear, Montana Story will be even more moving and insightful.

Our Call: It’s a cliche to say movies like Montana Story – quiet, methodical, modest in ambition – are increasingly rare, but it’s true. It’s a Movie For Adults that yields rewards as long as you show a little patience with it. STREAM IT. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.