Lane fights for her family in violent thriller ‘ Let Him Go’
“Let Him Go” is a suspenseful and violent thriller about two families fighting over which will raise a 3yearold boy. But it’s also a lyrical portrait of a longterm marriage.
“It’s a surprising movie,” said Diane Lane, who plays the film’s sensitive yet headstrong Margaret Blackledge, a Montana horse breaker whose husband, George ( Kevin Costner), is a retired sheriff. “One of the things Kevin has been ( calling the film) is honest.”
Directed and adapted by Thomas Bezucha (“The Family Stone”) from Larry Watson’s novel and set in the early 1960s, “Let Him Go” reunites the actors that played Superman’s parents over the past decade in Zack Snyder’s DC Comics movies. Lane and Costner were a solid Ma and
Pa Kent, but the depth and totality of the Blackledges’ interactions are on a whole other level. These two love, mourn, recall good times and bad, irritate and support one another with a natural ease. It’s delightful to watch, even as tension rises toward bloody confrontations in the third act.
“There is a therethere between us, so we can fill in the blanks,” Lane told The Chronicle over a Zoom discussion from the Toronto location of her next project, the postapocalyptic TV series “Y: The Last Man.” “There’s so much said with ( only) a look in a longterm relationship, or even the lack of a look. My character’s the more verbose one of the two, though she doesn’t tend to go on and on.”
In the film’s opening se
quence, the Blackledges’ adult son James is killed in a riding accident. His widow, Lorna ( Kayli Carter), decides to stay at her inlaws’ ranch for three years, even though she resents Margaret’s knowitall advice on how to raise grandson Jimmy. When Lorna marries an abusive guy named Donnie Weboy and without notice leaves town with him and Jimmy, Margaret sets out to find her grandson in North Dakota: Weboy family territory.
With a lawman’s misgivings, George rides along. Their road trip through Big Sky Country ( the movie was shot in Alberta) allows plenty of time for acts of intimacy and connection.
“The way I see it, George is trying to help Margaret process her grief,” Lane said. “He’s being gentle and accommodating to give her an opportunity to let go of her — and his — grandchild. It’s easier, in some ways, to take care of somebody else than to feel your own grief.”
When they get to the Weboy homestead, the Blackledges meet Donnie’s intimidating brothers and domineering mother, Blanche, who’ll stop at nothing to control her boys — and now their grandson.
Blanche is played by English actress Lesley Manville, who got an Oscar nod for her supporting role in the 2017 film “Phantom Thread.” She’s a prairie force of nature that’s a brutal contrast to Lane’s more sweetly steely grandma. The actresses had a blast.
“I can’t find Lesley at all when I watch this, I just see her character,” Lane said. “The scenes that we have together are such a treat, even though they’re shocking and disturbing.”
Though Lane doesn’t have any grandchildren yet, she says playing that part of Margaret wasn’t a stretch.
When Lane’s daughter was young, she says, “My dad used to make jokes ( and) say to me, ‘ I’m done with you! It’s this one! This is the one I’m interested in.’ ” ( She has one child, Eleanor, from her first marriage to actor Christopher Lambert.) “You can’t wait to get another whack at it as a grandparent.”
Her father, Burton Lane, was a drama coach who raised his daughter mostly in New York City. The actress made her first movie, “A Little Romance” ( 1979), at the age of 14. She played cowgirls and delinquents over the ensuing decade, earned critical praise for her cheating wife in “Unfaithful” ( 2002) and has a stillgrowing fan base for 2003’ s comforting “Under the Tuscan Sun.” The latter was scripted and directed by Lane’s dear friend, San Francisco writer Audrey Wells, who succumbed to cancer two years ago.
“She’ll always be in my heart and with me,” Lane said.
How does she feel about her newfound status as cinema’s goto heartland mom?
“I’m not going to rebuff that description,” she said. “I prefer to have not too much of a predictable trajectory with things, but I also walk through the open doors. I think the myth of creating your career is just that, it’s a myth. We film things and you just don’t know how they’re going to turn out. So when they turn out well, it’s a huge celebration for everyone — but the most excited I get is relieved!”