DIRECTOR
Robert Redford
SCREENWRITERS
Eric Roth
Richard LaGravenese
based
on the novel by
Nicholas Evans
PRODUCERS
Patrick Markey
Robert Redford
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Robert Richardson
MUSIC
Thomas Newman
EDITORS
Hank Corwin
Freeman Davies
Tom Rolf
CAST
Robert Redford (Tom Booker)
Kristin Scott Thomas (Annie MacLean)
Sam Neill (Robert MacLean)
Dianne Wiest (Diane Booker)
Scarlett Johansson (Grace MacLean)
Chris Cooper (Frank Booker)
Cherry Jones (Liz Hammond)
MPAA rating: PG-13
Running
time: 169m
U.S. release: May 15, 1998
Video availability: VHS - DVD
|
In
The Horse Whisperer, a stressed-out city-slicker woman
goes to Montana with her anguished teenage daughter and their
uncontrollable horse; she falls in love with the studly trainer
who works with the horse. How long did it take you to read that?
Ten seconds? It takes Robert Redford, the director and star,
two hours and forty-nine minutes. It feels like a lot
longer, too. One can appreciate what Redford is trying to do:
He wants to slow us down, to lure us into the leisurely tempo
of ranch life. That's nice of him, but unfortunately he also
gives us plenty of time to poke holes in the story.
The Horse Whisperer is a sort of compendium of Redford's
first three directorial efforts: the touchy-feely family conflict
of Ordinary People and A River Runs Through It
meets the hardworking-people-of-the-soil worship of The Milagro
Beanfield War. Admirers of Redford's previous (and best)
directorial outing, Quiz Show, won't find any of that
film's subtlety or smarts here. I haven't read Nicholas Evans'
source novel (adapted by The Fisher King's Richard LaGravenese
and Forrest
Gump's Eric Roth), but I'll give it the benefit of the
doubt and assume it isn't what the movie is -- The Horses
of Madison County.
Redford is Tom Booker, a laid-back cowboy who dedicates himself
to gentling wild horses when he isn't posing or Pez-dispensing
bits of down-home wisdom. New York editor Annie MacLean (Kristin
Scott Thomas) seeks him out after her daughter Grace (Scarlett
Johansson) gets into an accident that leaves her with an amputated
leg and her horse with physical and psychic wounds. It's up to
Tom, the ten-gallon therapist, to work his charms on the horse
and its equally wounded owners. For fun, I imagined transplanting
Tom to Ordinary People and letting him loose on Mary Tyler
Moore and Timothy Hutton; he'd set those uptight WASPs straight
in no time -- or in less time than it takes to cure Annie and
Grace.
The movie looks great (cinematographer Robert Richardson did
the honors), and Redford looks suspiciously great -- certainly
much younger than he did during his chat with Rosie O'Donnell
last week. At times he's prettier than his leading lady. And
the additional burden of directing himself seems to have drained
his charisma. But then the character of Tom as written defies
any interesting performance. Tom is a noble New Age cowboy, while
Annie is a standard rigid careerist and Grace is a pouty teen.
I kept flashing back to The
Sweet Hereafter, which gave us ten times as much in half
the screen time, and Johansson won't erase anyone's memory of
Sarah Polley's fate-scarred Nicole. Scott Thomas, meanwhile,
seems to be humoring Redford as both co-star and director, giving
him the simplistic emotions he wants.
The forgotten man of The Horse Whisperer is poor Sam Neill,
once again the clueless cuckold (see The Piano), as Annie's
doormat husband, who lets her yank their child out of school
and live on a ranch thousands of miles away with a guy she's
never met. Neill is offscreen for most of the movie, then shows
up near the end to complicate things as much as things ever get
complicated in this film. Annie faces a difficult choice -- should
she stay or should she go? I felt the same conflict about halfway
through this very long sit, but I heeded Tom's sage advice about
sticking to it, and so I did, long after Redford had beaten his
thematic dead horse ("To thine own self be true") to
death and beyond. |
