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The reader's forbearance at the outset is sought because although my process analysis of the movie, The Horse Whisperer, begins personally, it does not end so. I suppose that if we deny our narcissistic interest in a work of art, it will only return to derail subsequent progress; and I suspect that films do not really engage our emotional interests unless they are perceived in some fashion to be about ourselves. I also question the pretense of objectivity in many cultural analyses of film and am proposing a personal-processing mode as a corrective, albeit limited, alternative, insofar as it proves fruitful.
I begin my personal encounter with The Horse Whisperer by noting that I chose it from a field of competing mediocrities in small-town Virginia, probably because, along with my wife, I admire Robert Redford's moderate risk-taking and find him an attractive, resourceful performer; in addition, I have always been a pushover for Westerns' epic tales and evocative scenery. The film indeed had its stock of visual pleasures but, exiting the theatre, I was at a loss over what to make of its story. Driving home, our discussion addressed the question of whether Redford looked his age (roughly mine) or younger. In some shots with Annie, the leading lady (Kristin Scott Thomas), he looked considerably younger; in others the unsavory sight of a young Apollo crumbling into senior citizenhood was jarring, even painful. Our conversation was no doubt triggered by a recent piece in the New York Times (and subsequently in People Magazine) about aging actors (Redford, Newman, Beatty, Nicholson, Eastwood, etc.) being paired with starlets less than half their age and holding their own. Although these pieces could have explored the incest theme from the young woman's perspective, they opted instead for the dominant discourse of gender-oppression.
Our own post-movie discussion was inconclusive, and I was left still mulling over the plot. The film opens with a lyrical sequence in the New England winter countryside, which quickly turns catastrophic and traumatic. Two girls on an early morning horse-ride fall on an icy slope above a highway. One rider and her horse are killed; the other's horse is physically damaged and the girl (Grace) suffers the loss of her leg and an emotional trauma...