Chris Knipp
08-14-2025, 08:04 PM
http://www.chrisknipp.com/images/%20ewl.jpg
TABITHA ZAMINGA IN EAST OF WALL
KATE BEECROFT: EAST OF WALL (2025)
TRAILER (https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=NwGEF8B6Bcw)
Cowgirls of the Badlands
Though it's quite different in mood and social atmosphere, East of Wall reminds me of Chloe Zhao's widely seen and so far better reviewed 2017 film The Rider, (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3763) That was a young cowboy with tough health issues. Kate Beecroft's docu-fiction feature debut is a film about a young, tough, rebellious, recently widowed and still painfully grieving lady in the Badlands of South Dakota with a gaggle of girls given refuge here, not just her own, and 3,000 acres of ranchland and a bunch of horses they keep riding on in the rodeo, training, and selling at auction (and, she says, on TikTok). Tabitha's (real) daughter Porshia Zimiga is often present and a skilled rider, as well as voiceover narrator at times. Porsha's skilled riding at auctions adds to the sale values of the horses they bring to market. The main reason for watching this movie is not for the somewhat meagre storyline but to see how people look and how they live. You're guaranteed a rich, flavorful dose of that.
The cowboy life is a mythical American world, the most distinctive - and photogenic - subculture we may have. It's a tough, unyielding world. A little boy in the family, 3-year-old Stetson, is late to acquire speech. Yet his motor skills test as being very highly developed, so this means something is stressing him, the specialist says. Yes, mom Tabitha says, our world is stressful.
How much of all the specifics of this story is true we have to guess, but we know it was extensively "inspired by" Tabitha Zimiga, the subject of the film, with whom filmmaker Beecroft lived for three years. Tabitha is a horse trainer and sometime rodeo rider and certainly these tattoos up her arm and round her neck, this long bleach-blonde hair shaved on one side are her own look, and Porshia Zimiga is her own daughter. The actress Jennifer Ehle plays her mother, Tracey (and very well). Tabitha's husband John Quint has recently died and there are financial worries especially since there are all those teenagers living on the ranch. Tabitha "won't even try to ride anymore" since John died, Porsha tells in her breathy voiceover, adding that John also taught her how to ride, "I mean,really ride."
We don't know how many dogs and horses there are on this ranch, but they too, like the girls and boys, are handsome. The Rider zeroed in on a real young rodeo rider whose real life severe head injury makes him have to face giving up breaking horses and riding hard for show, and Chloe Zhao's film showed the bond between horses and humans and the beauty of Western lands. East of Wall does that too, shows horses and spaces, open skies and sweeping horizons. Most of all it delivers atmosphere, the rude, demanding glamor of ranch life that once fed into the great Hollywood movie Westerns.
More than a narrative, East of Wall is a string of memorable moments. There is a shot of a teenage boy (one of two males in Tabitha's young brood) in a sleeveless shirt communing with a dog that is unforgettable and hit me hard: sure enough, it's included in the trailer. Tabitha's and his mother's and Porsha's feistiness is always memorable. The big sale toward the end when Tabitha gets twenty thousand dollars for a horse she shows at auction, top sale of the evening, is exciting because earlier we have seen them sell three horses for three thousand each. And we also guess this is a tribute to Tabitha's skill at both showing and training horses, finally well rewarded. Her whisperer-level rapport is something we see often when she is judging a horse or when the camera sneaks up on her talking down a skittery one. Likewise the best moment of The Rider was the time when we saw Brady taming and eventually mounting a horse that had never been ridden before. Is there any more beautiful animal than the horse? Is any other human-animal relationship as historic and profound? To see a string of horses running together on the ranch is also singularly beautiful.
The roughness of the life is here too and in another brief but intense scene at night by a campfire a group of women talk about trauma in their lives, abuse by men, loss of men in violent accidents. In the case of Tabitha it turns out her husband committed a violent suicide and she had to clean up the abundant blood. With all that and the abundance of cuss words sometimes this feels like another ghetto, a world of hard times and suffering, only in the wide open spaces. We also sense at various times that these are often people who don't talk much, but feel a lot, and there is a certain beauty in that, a minimalism, a stoicism.
In terms of visuals and atmosphere East of Wall is a gem. While the story is a little sketchy, the look and authenticity of these tough talking, swearing women, boys and men on the periphery, with their horse auctions, are enough most of the way to make this feel like a special film.
A guy from Texas comes along, or comes forward (he actually has appeared early on), who wants to buy Tabitha's ranch and keep her on it to work it, with her extended family and her crew. This is a staged event obviously though, because the man, Roy, is played by Scoot McNairy, an actor who played a brutal slaver in 12 Years a Slave and Woody Guthrie in A Complete Unknown. His pitch is brief: I can make money with this ranch and you can't, and this will still be your home. But one of the boys says "But it won't be home anymore," and that is the eventual answer: No, we won't sell. Here's a jar of homebrew with a label on it: "No hard feelings." Goodbye. The main action is that one that does not happen, the non-selling of the ranch.
In an admiring and detailed review Harrison Richland on Indiewire (https://www.indiewire.com/criticism/movies/east-of-wall-review-kate-beecroft-1235087652/) mentions not only The Rider but also Nomadland and "'70s character pieces" like like Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces or Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. He thinks Beecroft and DP Austin Shelton’s lens is "far more nuanced" than the rough entry into chaos with non-actors achieved by the Safdies or Sean Baker. It is indeed possible that she may have worked with her milieu longer and more carefully. Let's see if she earns consideration with those other filmmakers. For sure Beecroft does make a rich, fluent, engaging use of the docu-drama mode in this debut film, framing the look and feel of a distinctive world in a captivating way. Some think it might have been an Oscar contender as a pure documentary and that the thin story arc weakens it, and they have a point. But this is a film to cherish that can grow on you in the re-watch because of the richness of its texture.
East of Wall, 97 mins., premiered at Sundance Jan. 24, 2025, also showing at a number of small US festivals plus Jerusalem. Now released by Sony Pictures Classics (as was The Rider) August 15, 2025. Metacritic (https://www.metacritic.com/movie/east-of-wall/) rating: 78%.
TABITHA ZAMINGA IN EAST OF WALL
KATE BEECROFT: EAST OF WALL (2025)
TRAILER (https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=NwGEF8B6Bcw)
Cowgirls of the Badlands
Though it's quite different in mood and social atmosphere, East of Wall reminds me of Chloe Zhao's widely seen and so far better reviewed 2017 film The Rider, (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3763) That was a young cowboy with tough health issues. Kate Beecroft's docu-fiction feature debut is a film about a young, tough, rebellious, recently widowed and still painfully grieving lady in the Badlands of South Dakota with a gaggle of girls given refuge here, not just her own, and 3,000 acres of ranchland and a bunch of horses they keep riding on in the rodeo, training, and selling at auction (and, she says, on TikTok). Tabitha's (real) daughter Porshia Zimiga is often present and a skilled rider, as well as voiceover narrator at times. Porsha's skilled riding at auctions adds to the sale values of the horses they bring to market. The main reason for watching this movie is not for the somewhat meagre storyline but to see how people look and how they live. You're guaranteed a rich, flavorful dose of that.
The cowboy life is a mythical American world, the most distinctive - and photogenic - subculture we may have. It's a tough, unyielding world. A little boy in the family, 3-year-old Stetson, is late to acquire speech. Yet his motor skills test as being very highly developed, so this means something is stressing him, the specialist says. Yes, mom Tabitha says, our world is stressful.
How much of all the specifics of this story is true we have to guess, but we know it was extensively "inspired by" Tabitha Zimiga, the subject of the film, with whom filmmaker Beecroft lived for three years. Tabitha is a horse trainer and sometime rodeo rider and certainly these tattoos up her arm and round her neck, this long bleach-blonde hair shaved on one side are her own look, and Porshia Zimiga is her own daughter. The actress Jennifer Ehle plays her mother, Tracey (and very well). Tabitha's husband John Quint has recently died and there are financial worries especially since there are all those teenagers living on the ranch. Tabitha "won't even try to ride anymore" since John died, Porsha tells in her breathy voiceover, adding that John also taught her how to ride, "I mean,really ride."
We don't know how many dogs and horses there are on this ranch, but they too, like the girls and boys, are handsome. The Rider zeroed in on a real young rodeo rider whose real life severe head injury makes him have to face giving up breaking horses and riding hard for show, and Chloe Zhao's film showed the bond between horses and humans and the beauty of Western lands. East of Wall does that too, shows horses and spaces, open skies and sweeping horizons. Most of all it delivers atmosphere, the rude, demanding glamor of ranch life that once fed into the great Hollywood movie Westerns.
More than a narrative, East of Wall is a string of memorable moments. There is a shot of a teenage boy (one of two males in Tabitha's young brood) in a sleeveless shirt communing with a dog that is unforgettable and hit me hard: sure enough, it's included in the trailer. Tabitha's and his mother's and Porsha's feistiness is always memorable. The big sale toward the end when Tabitha gets twenty thousand dollars for a horse she shows at auction, top sale of the evening, is exciting because earlier we have seen them sell three horses for three thousand each. And we also guess this is a tribute to Tabitha's skill at both showing and training horses, finally well rewarded. Her whisperer-level rapport is something we see often when she is judging a horse or when the camera sneaks up on her talking down a skittery one. Likewise the best moment of The Rider was the time when we saw Brady taming and eventually mounting a horse that had never been ridden before. Is there any more beautiful animal than the horse? Is any other human-animal relationship as historic and profound? To see a string of horses running together on the ranch is also singularly beautiful.
The roughness of the life is here too and in another brief but intense scene at night by a campfire a group of women talk about trauma in their lives, abuse by men, loss of men in violent accidents. In the case of Tabitha it turns out her husband committed a violent suicide and she had to clean up the abundant blood. With all that and the abundance of cuss words sometimes this feels like another ghetto, a world of hard times and suffering, only in the wide open spaces. We also sense at various times that these are often people who don't talk much, but feel a lot, and there is a certain beauty in that, a minimalism, a stoicism.
In terms of visuals and atmosphere East of Wall is a gem. While the story is a little sketchy, the look and authenticity of these tough talking, swearing women, boys and men on the periphery, with their horse auctions, are enough most of the way to make this feel like a special film.
A guy from Texas comes along, or comes forward (he actually has appeared early on), who wants to buy Tabitha's ranch and keep her on it to work it, with her extended family and her crew. This is a staged event obviously though, because the man, Roy, is played by Scoot McNairy, an actor who played a brutal slaver in 12 Years a Slave and Woody Guthrie in A Complete Unknown. His pitch is brief: I can make money with this ranch and you can't, and this will still be your home. But one of the boys says "But it won't be home anymore," and that is the eventual answer: No, we won't sell. Here's a jar of homebrew with a label on it: "No hard feelings." Goodbye. The main action is that one that does not happen, the non-selling of the ranch.
In an admiring and detailed review Harrison Richland on Indiewire (https://www.indiewire.com/criticism/movies/east-of-wall-review-kate-beecroft-1235087652/) mentions not only The Rider but also Nomadland and "'70s character pieces" like like Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces or Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. He thinks Beecroft and DP Austin Shelton’s lens is "far more nuanced" than the rough entry into chaos with non-actors achieved by the Safdies or Sean Baker. It is indeed possible that she may have worked with her milieu longer and more carefully. Let's see if she earns consideration with those other filmmakers. For sure Beecroft does make a rich, fluent, engaging use of the docu-drama mode in this debut film, framing the look and feel of a distinctive world in a captivating way. Some think it might have been an Oscar contender as a pure documentary and that the thin story arc weakens it, and they have a point. But this is a film to cherish that can grow on you in the re-watch because of the richness of its texture.
East of Wall, 97 mins., premiered at Sundance Jan. 24, 2025, also showing at a number of small US festivals plus Jerusalem. Now released by Sony Pictures Classics (as was The Rider) August 15, 2025. Metacritic (https://www.metacritic.com/movie/east-of-wall/) rating: 78%.