THE AISLE SEAT - "THE HORSE WHISPERER"

by Mike McGranaghan

The Horse Whisperer is a hard movie to explain. Parts of it are incredibly moving. Others are impossibly dull. I found my opinion wavering back and forth between the belief that this was one of the year's best pictures and the realization that a 2-hour masterpiece is somewhere to be found inside this 2-3/4 hour quasi-disappointment. Both ideas are correct. Does that make sense? Let me bottom-line it: the good parts are just enough to compensate for the bad ones.

Based on the best-selling novel by Nicholas Evans, The Horse Whisperer begins with a lot of promise. Young Grace MacLean (Scarlett Johansson) goes out for a ride on her horse Pilgrim. Her best friend is also along. The winter weather causes a tractor-trailer truck to skid out of control on an icy road, hitting the girls and their horses. The scene is so gut-wrenchingly terrifying that it almost makes the heart stop. As a result of the accident, Grace loses a leg, her best friend is killed, and Pilgrim is badly injured. A vet recommends that the horse be put down, but Grace's mother Annie (Kristin Scott-Thomas), a self-absorbed magazine editor, refuses to allow it.

Instead, she takes Grace and Pilgrim to Montana to see Tom Booker (Robert Redford, who also directed), a famous "horse whisperer" who - as he puts it - helps horses with people problems. Booker's job is to help Pilgrim rehabilitate not only the physical injuries but the emotional ones as well. The animal has gained an ill temperament from the accident, requiring it to be re-tamed so that Grace can learn to ride it again. Booker is the strong, silent cowboy type, and Annie finds herself irresistibly attracted, despite the fact that her husband (Sam Neill) is waiting back in New York.

It's really here that the film splits in two. The more interesting story is the one between Grace, Pilgrim, and Booker. There is a lot of eye imagery in the movie; the camera often zooms in for close-ups of eyes, showing the way that man and animal can look into one another's hearts. More than any film in recent memory, The Horse Whisperer understands the bond that people can create with animals. There's a lyrical beauty to these scenes that could come off as corny, but never does.

There's also magic in the performances. Scarlett Johansson is a real find, a child actor so natural on screen that it's easy to forget you're watching a performance. In one powerful moment, Grace sees Pilgrim for the first time post-accident. As she recoils from the sight of her majestic horse's gruesome injuries, Johansson makes you feel her shock. There is another scene in which Grace describes the accident for Booker, breaking down into tears. He holds her, finding just the right words for comfort. Although one star is a veteran and the other a newcomer, the performances are perfectly matched. Even the horse is good, which is crucial because Pilgrim is as important a character as any of the humans. On more than one occasion, the story about the healing of Grace and Pilgrim left me choked up. It illustrates filmmaking of the highest order.

Not so effective is the predictable, hackneyed love story between Booker and Annie. It's been done before (The Bridges of Madison County comes instantly to mind). In his review of Evans's novel, Gamut! book critic Steve Trapnell wrote that - like Bridges - The Horse Whisperer tries "to glorify adultery as the irresistable passion between true loves who find each other by sheer accident only when it's too late." The problem could have been completely solved by just trashing the whole adultery subplot (which isn't that interesting to begin with) and focusing instead on the girl/horse subplot (which is). Although fine actors, Redford and Scott-Thomas (The English Patient) don't have much chemistry together. Redford and Johansson do.

As a result, the romance keeps intruding on the things that are the most engrossing, which meant that I was alternately pulled into the movie, then pushed back out. And after the story reaches what should be its natural (and highly emotional) conclusion, we have to slog through 15 more minutes devoted to your basic will-they-or-won't-they? posturing between the adults.

The Horse Whisperer is often brilliant entertainment, but it's also seriously flawed. The simple solution would have been to completely cut out all the romantic stuff. The adulterous subplot and the frequent travelogue montages (Redford apparently loved Montana too much to cut any of it) are just window dressing. The soul of this film is in the relationship between that little girl, her horse, and the man who helps them both heal. When it stays focused on them, The Horse Whisperer is a movie of heartbreaking power.

( out of four)