In the world of Anmaere lies the city of Whithren. We're told that wild horses are the city's most valuable export and so they hunt, trap, sell and ship them, once a year, across the sea to the continent of Levithen. While Withren is a world of eternal and unrelenting heat, Levithen is in a constant state of winter. Each year, when the horses are shipped off to Levithen, the ship will also take passengers who have tickets. Unfortunately, the tickets are not only an incredibly... (Full plot summary below)
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In the world of Anmaere lies the city of Whithren. We're told that wild horses are the city's most valuable export and so they hunt, trap, sell and ship them, once a year, across the sea to the continent of Levithen. While Withren is a world of eternal and unrelenting heat, Levithen is in a constant state of winter. Each year, when the horses are shipped off to Levithen, the ship will also take passengers who have tickets. Unfortunately, the tickets are not only an incredibly rare commodity but they are also highly coveted.
Leave your thoughts about The Wanting Mare.
| Los Angeles TimesNoel MurrayIt’s remarkable how fully fleshed out Bateman’s hell-scape is, given that much of this movie was shot in an empty storage facility. There’s something haunting and poetic too about the simplicity of this story, which is primarily about how people find reasons to persevere once they find a companion. |
| Slant MagazineHenry StewartIt’s as if Nicholas Ashe Bateman is commenting on a distinctly American suburban malaise, using a fictional place, digitally made, to get at a real, painful truth about being stuck in a place you didn’t choose, amid circumstances you didn’t create. |
| Paste MagazineJacob OllerIt may not be a must-see movie for everyone, but a select few—scrappy DIY filmmakers, lovers of hands-off fantasy, those that love a good “film still as portrait”—will find something to enjoy. The rest might chafe a bit, but will still hang on to see where The Wanting Mare’s ride takes them. |
| Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerBateman's worldbuilding introduces stranger elements that are always counterbalanced by more grounded emotional developments, keeping the audience engaged as hard as the esoteric mythology pushes them away. In that delicate balance it bypasses the logical parts of the brain and speaks purely in quiet emotional truths. |
| IndieWireEric KohnThis kind of hushed, low-key story certainly wouldn’t be the most obvious place to start an epic, but it’s a captivating chunk of mood and personality begging for future chapters. Here’s hoping Bateman finds a way to tell them. |
| The Film StageJake Kring-SchreifelsThe Wanting Mare is a soft and silent seduction, an alluring yet unfulfilling poetic fable that leaves you wanting more. |
| Film ThreatAlex SavelievThe dream-like, poetic result is an astonishing visual achievement, an example of what an artist lacking a Hollywood budget can conjure with sheer ingenuity. That said, some may find its impenetrable narrative and purposefully distancing nature irritating. There’s only so long one can stare at an abstract painting. |
| RogerEbert.comRoxana HadadiThe failure of The Wanting Mare is in how superficial its world building is, and how unexplored its greatest questions remain. Technically, the film’s use of visual effects is unquestionably impressive, but all that CGI is in service of a narrative so underdeveloped that its 88-minute run-time sometimes feels like an eternity. |
