The Horse Whisperer [DVD] [1998]

For director Robert Redford the trick was directing himself. The Oscar-winning director (Ordinary People, Quiz Show) says that he is one kind of actor (in the moment) and a different kind of director (more controlling). Whatever the problems, Redford has worked it out beautifully in this leisurely paced adaptation of Nicholas Evans's bestseller, The Horse Whisperer. When the prized horse of New York magazine editor's (Kristen Scott Thomas) daughter suffers a horrible accident, she tracks down Tom Booker (Redford), a Montana horse healer who is known for working magic. Soon East Coast brashness meets Old West simplicity as the reluctant Annie takes her even more reluctant daughter (Scarlett Johansson) to Marlboro country. Booker's influence goes beyond the horse through healing the heart of daughter and mother. The 2-hour and 44-minute film is a beautiful travelogue of scene and sky (with a giant assist from Oliver Stone's usual cinematographer, Robert Richardson). Never complicated, the movie's rewards may be hidden in its length and Redford's tendency to introduce us to a way of life instead of focusing on a story. The major deviation from the end of Evans's novel is a welcomed change. --Doug Thomas

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.

On the DVD: Shot at 2.35:1 against very similar landscapes to Legends of the Fall (1994), The Horse Whisperer has a real epic visual sweep and the anamorphically enhanced image captures the endless landscapes and ever-changing skies well. However, there is more than expected grain, and some scenes show obvious compression artefacting. The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound is largely confined to the front three speakers, though creates some wonderfully atmospheric ambiences when called for; Thomas Newman's score is served particularly well in several key scenes. The extras are the American theatrical trailer and a music video for Allison Moorer's New Country ballad "A Soft Place to Fall", both crawling with compression artefacts. Also included are three "featurettes" on the production, Redford, and real-life "horse whisperer" Buck Brannaman, though each runs less than two minutes. The lack of any substantial extras is explained by Redford's comment in his "featurette" that wanting to know about how everything is done ruins the magic of the movies. --Gary S Dalkin