The Mustang, 2019

The whole of this film is delivered in one short scene:

An inmate is turning over the horse he trained to a police officer who is loading the horse into a trailer. The officer doesn’t understand how to handle the horse, and it begins to buck. The inmate calms the horse, guides it in, and looks through the slits of the closed door, breaking into pain as he lets the horse go.

The film as a whole is about another inmate taming a horse and by so doing, taming himself. It’s not easy. All he knows is rage. All the horse knows is rage. He takes the wrong approach, trying to subdue the horse by punching it, and has to start over to build trust and control. At the end, he rides the horse, the horse carries him, and they move as one.

This is a Jungian Individuation story. The self, fractured into parts, must come together, accommodate, control, and form a new whole. Dr. Jeckle subdues and absorbs Mr. Hyde. Marlow conques Kurtz. The inmate finally rides the horse.

In another scene, the inmates ride their horses in the open Nevada plains with a range of mountains reaching to the sky. I was reminded of the motorcycle scenes of Easy Rider, Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper riding on the open road. Both are scenes for the big screen. And here, the symbolism is even deeper – it holds not just freedom, but the freedom that comes with taming of the many parts of the self.