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Heartland is streaming on Netflix now.
A former country rock star searches for her missing niece in Shana Feste’s Heartland, a film with the broad appearance of a neo-noir, but one that doesn’t have nearly enough thrills or intrigue. The story comes from a place of love, both for country music and for Nashville. However, it unfolds too mechanically to unearth the seedy underbelly at which it hints, making for lackluster mystery despite Jessica Chastain’s enormous efforts at drawing emotions from a tepid script.
It begins interestingly enough, with Chastain’s washed-up, tough-as-nails musician Misty Jones huddled over a grave as she tearfully buries her dog before threatening the neighbor who killed it. None of this has any bearing on the larger plot, but it paints Misty as a cornered animal; she has nothing and no one. Her fridge is scant except for a forgotten Grammy she stores there for safe-keeping, a fun bit of environmental storytelling by way of visual information. Before long, though, this becomes the movie’s default lingua franca, with an unending number of shots of photographs and documents to try and piece together a whodunnit when Misty’s niece — the daughter of her estranged brother, an up-and-coming country artist named Charlie Heart (Carter Faith) — turns up missing.
This draws Misty back to the Nashville music scene, where she navigates ineffectual cops and seedy industry figures while retracing Charlie’s steps. The mystery of her disappearance runs parallel to Misty reacquainting herself with her problem-child past and through predatory people and places she once knew, leading to an eventual overlap of these simultaneous threads by way of a family secret. However, each time Heartland features a major reveal, it zips forward far too quickly alongside its umpteenth country music cue, as though it were entering some well-established final act.
In the process, what you’re left with is a story where Misty stumbles her way into information or ping-pongs between various characters — like Garett Hedlund’s charismatic producer Roy Combs — and ends up feeling like an inactive protagonist despite technically driving the plot. She moves from place to place, but rare are the moments when she puts two and two together. Chastain is remarkably locked-in as the aging country star — a woman who doesn’t want to be seen but is forced back into the spotlight. However, as convincing as her conception of Misty may be, it doesn’t matter all that much when every plot turn seems to fall into her lap.
This passive experience is further marred by mechanical filmmaking. While it all technically coheres — the nighttime spaces, lit by halogen signs, are all appropriately noxious; Feste manages to capture Chastain’s close-ups with clarity — you could practically set your watch by how each subplot plays out, and the way learning something new sends Misty charging to a new location at the end of practically every scene. It’s a languid film with no breathing room, an oxymoron that makes sense once the film winds up and you can recount how much has happened by way of plot, and how little by way of story or emotional development. For instance, there are hints and flashbacks about her ex-husband and musical partner Clark (John Hawkes) throughout, but his appearance is relegated to late in the runtime while his actual role as a specter of her past ends up with little actual impact.
Its country music interludes play like wheel-spinning interruptions despite gesturing at phantom connections between violence and the genre at large.
The pieces for some other more rigorous story all appear to be in place, from people Misty knows she can’t trust to former friends with whom she needs to make amends. Unfortunately, Heartland strings these together in rote fashion. Its camera is used to tell more than to show, and its country music interludes play like wheel-spinning interruptions despite gesturing at phantom connections between violence and the genre at large. The film, as a whole, feels episodic and disconnected.
Through it all, Chastain remains remarkable as ever; unfortunately, it’s as a woman who would rather be anywhere else — a feeling that’s hard to shake when sitting down to watch Heartland for yourself.
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