There is no unknown country in The Unknown Country, a gently meandering road trip through an America that even those of us directly unacquainted have traveled via the movies: Morrisa Maltzs lovely second feature trades in the familiar imagery of unfettered highways ribboned through the great, grassy middle of nowhere, roadside inns outlined in humming hot-pink neon, gas stations slumped against the sparse landscape like oily oases. Its the people building their lives along this route, however, that this sociable, inquisitive docufiction seeks to discover, as Maltz profiles the faces flashing by the driver only passing through. A diner hostess, a convenience store clerk, a motel proprietor here, all get to share their stories beyond the usual scope of road-movie bit parts.
Indeed, for much of the films compact running time, we learn more about these foregrounded background figures playing themselves with generous candor and good humor than we do about its ostensible protagonist Tana, played with typically watchful intelligence by Lily Gladstone, the marvelous star of Kelly Reichardts Certain Women and Martin Scorseses upcoming Killers of the Flower Moon. A Minneapolis resident, shes prompted by her grandmothers death to explore her Native American heritage along a winding asphalt trail down to Texas. But if Tana has an ostensible mission, her deeper motivations are harder to glean, only suggested in the expressive shifts (sometimes sorrowful, sometimes beatific, often some balance of both at once) of the stars warm, open face.
That is by design: One of only a few pro actors in a textured real-world ensemble, Gladstones gracefully restrained performance is as much a conduit of the people around her as it is its own individual portrayal. This isnt as creased or as close-up a character study as Chlo Zhaos similarly conceived Nomadland, a film to which The Unknown Country, with its cross-country scope and documentary inflections, will routinely be compared. Where Zhaos film was driven by a restless sense of purpose in its stubbornly individualist heroine, Fern, Maltzs gets by on an equally compelling air of supple social drift: Tana paints herself quite happily into the communities she tries out along the way, all the while planting herself in her grandmothers footsteps or tire tracks. It seems she has spent her adult life caring for the woman who just passed: Who she is, and what she wants, are questions for another day, another town.
The call to hit the road comes, unexpectedly, from another corner of her family: In the midst of her mourning, Tana is contacted by her cousin Lainey (Lainey Bearkiller Shangreaux) in South Dakota, with an invitation to attend her wedding. Tana is hesitant, not having seen her Oglala Lakota relatives since she was a small child; absences and estrangements are implied but not detailed in Maltzs loose, porous screenplay, from a story that Gladstone and Shangreaux had a hand in workshopping. But she goes, drawn by loneliness and curiosity, and finds her people in the best sense: Laineys young daughter Jasmine (Jasmine Bearkiller Shangreaux), in particular, takes a shine to her, while elders implore her to visit the Pine Ridge Reservation next: Its like going home, one says, promising itll remind you of everything thats good about where you come from.
Tana duly extends her trip, though if she finds a semblance of home in the reservation, it doesnt stop her driving: Piecing together an itinerary from photos in her grandmothers album, she keeps heading south, and the film expands its heartland human quilt. Away from Tanas narrative, we routinely veer into secondary characters stories, unfolding as isolated nonfiction vignettes. A store cashier jovially banters with Tana before we segue into his reflection on his long-term (and ultimately rewarded) search for a boyfriend; a waitress reflects on her cheery customer service ethos before inviting us into her home life, dotingly shared with hordes of once-abandoned cats; the manager of a line-dancing hall casts a spotlight on the establishments still-shimmying nonagenarian founder.
It would be easy for such interludes to feel like patronizing ethnographic diversions, but Maltz and editor/co-writer Vanara Taing do a fine, delicate job of ensuring that the films invented and observed narratives all share the same fabric, enhancing and informing each other as a collective. Andrew Hajeks patiently roving lensing isnt averse to the odd enraptured magic-hour vista, but binds the films various modes and methods in a common, sandy-hued visual language.
Tana may carry the films finale, but its epiphanies are modest, its incidents a run-in with a traffic cop, a breath of romance with a Dallas dreamboat taken casually in stride, part of a larger whole that spans real-life portraiture and quoted Mary Oliver poetry. Sometimes, just sometimes, Gladstone gets a sustained moment to herself if only a cigarette break and The Unknown Country pauses and breathes and enjoys the quiet, a blip in a nation where the wheels are always turning.