The Horse Whisperer (film)
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| Director(s) | Robert Redford |
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| Distributor | Walt Disney Video |
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| Although it’s best viewed on a big theatrical screen to take full advantage of Robert Richardson’s breathtaking widescreen cinematography, it seems likely that most people will see this classy romance in the comfort of their own homes. Adapted from the bestseller by Nicholas Evans and directed by Robert Redford, the film did respectable business at the box-office, but it was too sprawling and too soapy to be a bona fide hit. Redford stars as the title character, a Montana rancher named Tom Booker, who possesses the specialized talent of healing traumatized horses… | |
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Although it’s best viewed on a big theatrical screen to take full advantage of Robert Richardson’s breathtaking widescreen cinematography, it seems likely that most people will see this classy romance in the comfort of their own homes. Adapted from the bestseller by Nicholas Evans and directed by Robert Redford, the film did respectable business at the box-office, but it was too sprawling and too soapy to be a bona fide hit. Redford stars as the title character, a Montana rancher named Tom Booker, who possesses the specialized talent of healing traumatized horses through careful and affectionate rehabilitation. He gets his most challenging case when he’s sought out by a fast-lane New York magazine editor (Kristin Scott Thomas, in a role modeled after former New Yorker editor Tina Brown) whose daughter (Scarlett Johansson) was injured and traumatized by an accident that nearly killed her favorite horse. When mother, daughter, and horse arrive at Booker’s ranch, the big-city editor falls in love with the serene rancher and faces the painful decision of whether to stay in Montana or return to her husband (Sam Neill) in New York. Some may find this to be much ado about nothing, and comparisons to The Bridges of Madison County are inevitable, but Redford’s directorial approach offers the kind of graceful stature, tenderness, and intelligence required to elevate the simple story. The film takes all the time it needs to let its characters heal and make their important decisions, and that alone makes it a refreshing alternative to the frantic pace of most big-studio productions. —Jeff Shannon
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Robert Redford’s fifth feature as director, and the first self-directed film in which he has starred, The Horse Whisperer features him in a role he could have been born to play, Tom Booker, a gentle, thoughtful Montana rancher with a gift for healing “horses with people problems”. When Grace MacLean (12-year-old Scarlett Johansson) suffers a shockingly well-staged riding accident her New York magazine editor mother drives daughter and horse, both carrying physical and emotional trauma, to the Booker farmstead. What unfolds is a 162-minute film in which little happens, yet which is lyrical, deeply moving and richly atmospheric. Inevitably both girl and horse start to heal, while the mother, Annie (Kristin Scott Thomas), who in the early scenes seems disconcertingly to have modelled her performance on Anne—The Weakest Link—Robinson, comes to reassess her life. The adulterous affair of Nicholas Evans’ novel is reduced to temptation and treated with much greater maturity than in Scott Thomas’ previous English-language film, The English Patient (1996). Indeed, The Horse Whisperer is everything that Oscar winner was hailed as: an intimate sweeping romance in the tradition of David Lean, with superlative cinematography by Robert Richardson and a career-best musical score by Thomas Newman. Thematically echoing Redford’s own multi-Oscar winning directorial debut, Ordinary People (1980), The Horse Whisperer is one of the finest films of the 1990s. —Gary S Dalkin
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The Horse Whisperer: A Novel
A forty-ton truck hurtles out of control on a snowy country road, a teenage girl on horseback in its path. In a few terrible seconds the life of a family is shattered. And a mother’s quest begins—to save her maimed daughter and a horse driven mad by pain. It is an odyssey that will bring her to…The Horse Whisperer
He is the stuff of legend. His voice can calm wild horses and his touch heal broken spirits. For secrets uttered softly into pricked and troubled ears, such men were once called Whisperers. Now Tom Booker, the inheritor of this…
