Daisy Edgar-Jones, Jacob Elordi, Will Poulter, Diego Calva and Sasha Calle were all in Toronto for the premiere of On Swift Horses at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). Directed by Daniel Minahan, based on the novel by Shannon Pufahl, the film brings us to the 1950s for a story that Minahan described as a “reimagining of the American dream.”
On Swift Horses begins in what seems like a perfectly aspiration middle-class life. Muriel (Edgar-Jones) and Lee (Poulter) are set to start their lives together in California, with plans to start a family.
When Lee’s brother Julius (Elordi) returns to the U.S. from the Korean War, it’s clear that Julius and Muriel share a connection, a secret their keeping from the outside world.
“We have this paradigm set up in the film. One is Muriel is pursuing this very conventional relationship with her husband Lee, and Julius is living on the road, literally, this kind of freewheeling gambling. They’re both aspirational stories,” Minahan told Yahoo Canada. “The idea of buying a house as a young couple in a housing development and creating community and buying a car is very American, and it’s very aspirational. The idea of going to Las Vegas and gambling and winning a ton of money, and overnight becoming a rich person is also.”
“Add to it that they’re both outsiders, … they’re both hiding. And I think you get to the truth of what it is, which is that I think even people who are living that life, living the dream so to speak, still feel like outsiders. These characters truly are because they’re queer in a time when homosexuality is criminalized. … But I think everyone can relate to the idea of having to hide yourself and your real feelings, and your real desires. … That’s why I do describe it as a reimagining of the American dream.”
‘No one ever really talks about those kinds of alliances’
Minahan “fell in love” with Pufahl book when he was reading it, and was particularly attraction to the “unspoken alliance” in the story between Muriel and Julius.
“Muriel and Julius meet, recognize each other, have this intense attraction and change the course of each other’s lives,” Minahan said. “I thought that was really beautiful. I hadn’t seen that before.”
“They spend three-quarters of the film apart, but have this huge influence on each other. I thought that was so beautiful and no one ever really talks about those kinds of alliances that form. … I was talking to Shannon Pufahl … about this, and I was like, it’s so interesting that homosexuality is criminalized at this time, but these people managed to find each other and make these incredible lives together.”
‘I didn’t want to feel like we were imitating a period film’
Assisting in bringing On Swift Horses to the screen is award-winning Canadian cinematographer Luc Montpellier, adding a real visual richness to the story we see unfold.
“In the beginning he said, ‘What films should we look at together?’ And I said, how about instead of looking at films, if we look at documentary, photography from the period,” Minahan shared.
“I didn’t want to feel like we were imitating a period film. I wanted this to be very accessible. So we watched some documentary stuff from the period, Gordon Parks the photographer, Bruce Davidson the photographer, paintings of John Koch. Each very unique. I think that kind of informed what we were doing. Then we just used our instincts on set to decide how things would look.”
In terms of working with the actors in the movie, over the course of a two-week period before they started filming, they workshopped different moment from the story and did things like learned 1950s dances, which Minahan highlighted really “bonded” the cast.
“Daisy, in particular, asked, ‘What would she be reading?’ … So I sent her two books,” Minahan shared.
“Interestingly, in the year that our film is set, the two top books are ‘Peyton Place,’ which was a real kind of steamy exposé of a small town in America where people are having affairs and there’s an abusive husband, and then someone has an abortion. It was a very controversial novel. … Then the other book was ‘On the Road’, the Kerouac book. And that’s so interesting to me.”
Overall, the actors in On Swift Horses successfully lean into this exploration of each person’s desires and aspirations, in this sweeping romance that represents different forms of love.