THE HORSE WHISPERER

 

THREE STARS – Thought-provoking

 

 

        Few films present the complexities of restoring a broken life as does Robert Redford’s “The Horse Whisperer.”   With a clear sense of the vulnerability inherent within an injured person’s soul, Redford weaves together the lives of three broken persons into a tale of courage, love and morality.

        Based upon a novel by Nicholas Evans, the story begins when a young teenager, Grace Maclean (Scarlett Johansson) is injured due to a freak accident while riding her horse, Pilgrim.

        The depth of her injury is more than just the loss of her right leg, or the loss of her best friend; Grace loses her very self.

        Overcome with anger at the senseless loss of life and limb, Grace becomes increasingly depressed and lacks the will to live.   In an attempt to find her way back out of the darkness, Grace decides to go and visit Pilgrim.

        She is devastated by what she finds.

        No one has told her that Pilgrim is not only disfigured physically but has also become a violent animal expressing a fearful rage.  It is clear that Pilgrim needs to be “put down” by a lethal injection.

        As Grace contemplates this decision, she penetrates her mother’s veneer of competent control when she decides that not only should Pilgrim be killed, but that she also should be “put down” because she is also of no use.

        Annie Maclean (Kristin Scott Thomas) reacts with the only tool she knows how to use:  information.  As the editor of a successful magazine, Annie uses her resources to search for a horseman who can restore Pilgrim to health as a symbol for the truth that Grace can also be returned to wholeness.  Her search leads her to Tom Booker (Robert Redford), a man who is described as being a “horse whisperer.”

        Rather than a breaker of horses through domination and cruelty, Booker is a man who is able to connect with horses through mastering the communication system of eye contact and bodily movements horses use to maintain their relationships within the herd.

        As a broken man himself, who is recovering from a failed marriage to a woman he deeply loved, Booker puts off Annie and her plea for help.  But Annie is a woman of unusual determination.

        As a troubled person whose father had died when she was young and that loss had caused her to try to prove she doesn’t need a man economically or emotionally, Annie will not take no for an answer.   Instead, she leaves her husband Robert (Sam Neill) in New York and, along with an angry Grace, trailers Pilgrim to Booker’s ranch in Montana.

        It is there in the beautiful meadows of Montana that these three lives are woven into a fabric of restoration.

        What we appreciate about the film is not only the complexity within which the healing occurs, but also the moral choices finally made by the film’s characters.

        Unlike many artists who have accepted the postmodern view that personal happiness takes precedence over all other moral choices, Redford instead expresses the truth that true healing can only be experienced through making moral choices which ultimately honor the commitments of marriage.

        Demonstrating the patience of a “horse whisperer,” not unlike the approach of a therapist or a pastor, Booker allows both Pilgrim and Grace to slowly develop a trust in him which gives them the courage to step out from behind their angry fear into a new life together.

        The complexity of their healing is deepened when Annie is confronted with the emptiness of her own life in which she has not allowed herself to need a man or to seek intimacy in her marriage.

        With the same depth of non-verbal communication he uses with horses, Booker communicates with the inner person beneath Annie’s capable exterior and they fall in love.  But this love is more than just the attraction of two vulnerable people, it is the realization that both are capable of far more than they are currently experiencing.

        With a moral choice that expresses a depth of spiritual wisdom seldom seen in films, both realize that their lives encompass more than their love and that true healing begins with restoration within their present relationships.

        Whispering into the deafening chaos of modern life, “The Horse Whisperer” communicates a truth which provides us with a hope based on trust, integrity, caring and faithfulness to fulfill our commitments.

 

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