'The Wanting Mare' Review: A Visually Transporting Fable With a Stubbornly Opaque Story 'The Wanting Mare' Review: A Visually Transporting Fable With a Stubbornly Opaque Story Nicholas Ashe Bateman's directing debut is a triumph of dystopian world-building as three generations of women share the same dream of "the world before." Mark Keizer, provided by FacebookTwitterEmail Running time: Running time: 89 MIN. The explanatory text that opens “The Wanting Mare,” Nicholas Ashe Bateman’s ambitious, epoch-spanning directing debut, informs us that in the city of Whithren, citizens are desperate to escape by booking passage on the once-a-year transport ship that carries wild horses to the wintry promised land of Levithen. These words, a fantasist’s delight, only barely set the table for what’s to come, a visually enthralling but elliptical and withholding quasi post-apocalyptic drama about three generations of Whithren women who carry with them the burdensome memories of “the world before.”