Pure Grit review – melancholy tale of love and Rocky mountain bareback horse racing
This mesmerising documentary follows the turbulent life of a young Native American woman as she returns to racing after a year off
This melancholy but beautiful documentary spends three years following Sharmaine Weed, a young Native American woman in her 20s who loves bareback horse racing, a sport favoured by Indigenous people in the region of the Rocky Mountains. Director Kim Bartley follows Sharmaine’s struggle to get back into racing after having taken a year off, spent helping to look after her younger sister who was paralysed after an accident on the racetrack.
Entwined with this story is a subplot about Sharmaine’s passionate but tempestuous relationship with city girl Savannah Martinez, who comes to live with Sharmaine and her family on the Wind River reservation in Wyoming, But the lovers must also both contend with the after-effects of surviving horrifically abusive childhoods, with families on both sides that are still riven by substance abuse, violence and suicidal tendencies. All that suffering is stoically alluded to but not dwelled on overmuch, as the film prefers to observe Sharmaine, Savannah and their wide circle friends and family as they ride horses against a never-ending big-sky backdrop, gambol in the grasses with children and pets, and hunt deer in the winter months.
