Shane Carruth rarely plays it safe. An actor, director, screenwriter, composer, and producer, his major achievements—“Primer” and “Upstream Color”—remain idiosyncratic and unique in their execution and deconstruction of science-fiction. Steven Soderbergh and Rian Johnson have both spoken glowingly of his work, with the former describing him as, “the illegitimate offspring of David Lynch and James Cameron.”
Soon to make its World Premiere with the online iteration of the Chattanooga Film Festival, Carruth returns as Executive Producer of Nicholas Ashe Bateman’s debut feature “The Wanting Mare”—a dark indie fable set in the mythical world of Anmaere: where horses are the most valuable export, and generational strife and dreams inhabit the minds of a few women hoping to leave their dead-end circumstances.
Recently, Carruth made himself available for an extensive conversation, but for this part of it, we’ll stick to his thoughts on “The Wanting Mare.”
I finished watching “The Wanting Mare.” It’s an incredible movie.
Is that what you think? Is that how you feel?
Yeah, I do. I went into it blind. It’s very relevant and I felt it a lot.
Wait. Tell me more. Relevant to our current experience right now? Or just in general? Like over life?
Both actually.
Yeah. Okay. I can see that. Oh yeah.
The first thing I wanted to ask you is how did you get involved with the film?
Here’s the deal. I’m not involved with the film. I didn’t make this. I just know Nick was in CoatWolf [Productions]; Evan has a movie coming out called “Canary.” It’s gonna pretty much destroy everybody all day for years. It’s one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen and he’s still not done with it. So it’s still getting better. In the meantime, Nick did a lot of work, a lot of 2D, CG editing. Making it. Perfecting it.
And after that, he knew that he was his own Alpha Wolf and he needed to make his own thing. And so they separated. I loved it. Because I get to be friends with both of them. And so Nick, he’s been building this world. If [I] talk to him to call him, then we’ll talk about “The Wanting Mare,” about Whithren. We’ll talk about cities. And after a while you have a map in your head and you’re like, “Oh God. This guy’s only telling you a fraction of the story of how this works.” But I can pull out shit right now about what’s coming next. And it blows my mind, the ideas that he has. But you know, it’s not time for that. Still, the guy made a world, and now he is taking a moment. It’s so good.
I found myself gravitating toward the mythos that’s been created around this world of horses and different continents. There’s that first aerial shot that’s a map. Immediately I was thinking, “What’s that dot? That dot?”
Totally. Totally. And that’s what I mean. And of course, I mean that’s not real. That’s just him being awesome with Blender. He’s amazing. And here’s the thing: the guy’s going to get promoted like a CG 2D artist, like a Neill Blomkamp kind of guy. “Oh, okay. That’s a skill. I get it. Cool.”
That’s not the case with this guy, dude. Like yes, that stuff. But he did it out of necessity. It doesn’t mean that the literature is less. The literature is real. In the trailer it says, “If you’re not going to get me across, then you’ll just have to forget me. I’ll forget you. You forget me.” That is not somebody who’s obsessed [solely] with using CG-like rendering, right? This is literature. It’s just in this day and age, some of us have to come up with clever ways to get it across.
Something that really interested me was the ecological theme in the film. There’s a scene where someone turns into dust and is consumed by a horse, which on its face feels fantastical, but is actually grounded in realism. As you know, we ultimately return to the ground and become the mulch for the grass the horses graze on. There’s a Whitman transcendentalist quality to it, which reminds me of “Upstream Color.” Could you speak on the return to nature theme that’s prevalent in “The Wanting Mare.”
I’m thinking. Alright, well I’m stuck. I’m in a dichotomy right now. Cause what you said could be true. It could be. I can’t fight it, but I’m not here to say that at all. I don’t say that there’s similarities.
I mean, you know my deal with “Upstream,” right? I didn’t know that I was stealing from “Walden.” I don’t think I was stealing from “Walden.” I really don’t. But I do see it. I see the similarities. I see what I got from it; what I stole…Maybe that’s the wrong word. So I’m not going to do that with Nick, but um…
I wouldn’t call it theft. Just a theme that feels recurrent, like with anything that ends up feeling somewhat universal.
I could try to do it. I could make a connection, but I’d be lying. I’m still watching his film. I watch it once in a while. I watched the trailer. It’s one of these things. It’s like you leave the theater, you know, after “Phantom Thread” or whatever you saw and you’re like, “Okay, well I don’t know if I saw a whole movie there, but I just want to talk about it.”
What’s that Tarantino movie that Tony Scott directed starring Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette?
“True Romance”
There we go. “True Romance.” Okay. It’s like that. There we go. Great. Because in “True Romance,” after they see the movie, Patricia Arquette, says she wants to go have a piece of pie and talk about it. That’s literally the only reason I even brought it up was to recall that scene.
I think one of the values you get from making something that’s a little bit obtuse, a little bit insular, a little bit inside itself is that you allow the audience to walk away and have something to talk about. And I don’t mean it as a trick. I don’t mean you should make movies obtuse just to make people have a reason to go get gelato afterward. I just mean that there is such a thing in film that is just like the greatest book you ever read, and you can’t wait to tell your wife about it. And have her read it; and you can talk about it in depth.
What have you taken away from “The Wanting Mare?” How has it connected with you?
It’s the women, generation after generation, that have the same dream. They have the same longing. They know there’s something they should probably do, they think, but they don’t know what it is. So they live in this place, but only once in a while can you actually ever leave. And so eventually the third one decides she has to go. She’s gotta get out of this. It’s “Thunder Road.” “We gotta get out of place. We’ve got to go to a city. Pack up. You want to get in the car with me?” That kind of stuff.
In the meantime, you have a lot of men running around with guns that are worried about tickets and horses. That’s the bit about money. That’s the bit about dollars. That’s a bit about coercion. Moving and pressing, and you mix them both up. Then you have something like a spirit that’s got to get out of that fucking town.
“The Wanting Mare” will debut at the Chattanooga Film Festival this weekend. Digital tickets are available now.