Holding Fire: A Reckoning with the American West

Rancher and conservationist Andrews (Down from the Mountain) portrays the transformative beauty and violence of the American West in this evocative outing. He moved to Montana as a young man just out of school seeking work as a ranch hand, and here details the brutal lifestyle he led in stark snapshots: discovering one morning that someone had killed several deer during the night and left them in a nearby field, fighting his distaste for hunting, and having to put down a sick horse. Andrews, whose father was a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War, eventually wanted a more serene life and moved with his wife to a farm in western Montana. His inherited Smith & Wesson revolver works as a talisman of sorts as he mulls over what to do with it, ultimately deciding to melt it down and refashion it as a spade to symbolically protest the Indigenous lives lost in the settling of the West. Andrews’s personal struggles are mirrored in his examination of the region’s beautiful if treacherous landscape: when he learned during a deadly summer drought that his wife was pregnant, he recalls, “Encountering that fear among our hopes was like finding a rattlesnake in the garden.” It’s a bittersweet meditation on the true meaning of the Wild West. Agent: Duvall Osteen, Aragi. (Feb.)