Venice Festival: Why die at the end of the world?

Martin McDonagh returns to the Venice Film Festival every few years, and his work fits the event’s intellectual ambitions. After winning Silver Lions for the screenplays of “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” and “The Banshees of Inisherin,” he now brings “Wild Horse Nine” to the competition.

This time, McDonagh moves his camera to Rapa Nui, or Easter Island. The year is 1973, shortly before the coup that overthrew Salvador Allende’s government and brought a military junta led by General Augusto Pinochet to power. For the moment, however, there is relative calm.

Two CIA agents based in Santiago are sent to the island, but not for a covert operation. Chris, the older agent, is dying of cancer and has little time left. He wants to die with dignity, by suicide, or rather by staging one. He asks Lee, a younger agent with whom he has worked for years, to help. Chris knows Lee can shoot professionally and kill instantly without leaving an unappealingly messy wound.

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I killed people before you were born. I killed people in countries whose names you can’t even pronounce.

Lee is also dealing with conflicts with his wife and must maintain contact with a senior CIA chief who is pursuing his own game. Chris, already slipping into dementia but still reasonably lucid, records memories of the operations he has carried out around the world. CIA leadership wants to destroy his recordings, especially those concerning Dallas.

The film presents an intelligence network that wraps around the globe. Even on Easter Island, far from political centers, it becomes impossible to know who is a tourist and who is a CIA officer. American intelligence services control Chile’s political situation, and cynicism and political despotism pour from the screen.

Yet laughter continues through the cinema, largely because of Malkovich’s performance. Chris casually tells Lee, “I killed people before you were born. I killed people in countries whose names you can’t even pronounce.” The reviewer sees the loyal, almost father-and-son friendship between the two agents as the film’s central motif. McDonagh himself says, “For me, the friendly, almost father-and-son relationship between these two men is the most important motif of the film.”

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For me, the friendly, almost father-and-son relationship between these two men is the most important motif of the film.