Spiritual solution comes
close to convincing
The
Horse Whisperer holds out the hope that healing is
possible
The Horse Whisperer, starring Robert Redford, Kristin Scott Thomas and Scarlett Johansson, is directed by Redford. Rated PG-13 for a disturbing accident scene.
By
Peter T. Chattaway
ChristianWeek movie critic
The Horse Whisperer marks the first time that Robert Redford has both directed and starred in a film, and it’s not hard to see what attracted him to the Nicholas Evans novel on which this film is based.
Like Ordinary People, Redford’s first directorial effort, it tells the story of a married couple in crisis after their child is scarred for life in a horrific accident. And like that earlier film, it holds out the hope that healing is possible–but only after one lets go of the need to control the world and accepts the cards that life has dealt.
But where Ordinary People found a sort of secular salvation in modern psychiatry, The Horse Whisperer aims for something more "mythological," as Redford puts it. And he very nearly pulls it off. The story has clear spiritual overtones, and the outdoor photography is often spectacular, awe-inspiring, even reverent–it is as if, by getting closer to God’s creation, one could approach the source of life and wholeness itself.
Grace MacLean (Scarlett Johansson) is a 14-year-old girl who loses a leg and watches her best friend die in a horseback-riding accident early in the film. Grace’s horse Pilgrim survives, but just barely. Grace’s mother Annie (Kristin Scott Thomas), an obsessive magazine editor, looks for a way to help them both and discovers Tom Booker (Redford), a "horse whisperer" who, it is said, can see into a horse’s soul and soothe its psychological wounds.
And so, leaving her husband Robert (Sam Neill) behind in New York, Annie heads for Tom’s ranch in Montana, taking Grace and Pilgrim with her. As if those names weren’t enough, religious elements pop up elsewhere in the film too, from the prayers said before dinner at the Booker house–an act of quiet simplicity that seems to startle Annie–to the bits of sermons heard on Annie’s car radio, which speak of the healing and rejuvenation made possible by God.
Well-intentioned
Films this well-intentioned come out so rarely, you just want to root for them. In an age when studios crank out one noisy, relentless action flick after another to give the eye-candy junkies their brain-rotting hit, it is refreshing to find a film which takes its time and extols the virtues of just sitting and listening to one another–for hours, if necessary.
But a movie that follows too simple a trajectory can also get rather boring, especially if there is never any doubt in the viewer’s mind that healing will prevail in the end, and especially if that end takes almost three hours to arrive. So, just to mix things up a little, the script has Annie and Tom flirt with the possibility of an extramarital affair, a subplot that is as unnecessary as it is unconvincing.
Tom is such a well-balanced, even-keeled kind of guy that it’s hard to believe he would fall for anyone, let alone someone as obviously insecure as Annie. Nor does Redford really try to make this subplot work; he recites his more romantic lines as if he knew no one would find them all that interesting anyway.
The best moments are those that focus on the relationship between Pilgrim and Grace. In many ways, Pilgrim is a more complex character than Tom or any of the other humans. At times Redford takes us inside Pilgrim’s mind, allowing us to see the world from his point of view. And when horse and rider are finally reunited, it’s as sublime and potent an image of healing and restoration as anything else we’re likely to see this year.
