The easiest way to describe this documentary is to say it’s about the guy who helped inspire the main character in the Nicholas Adams novel, and later Robert Redford film, The Horse Whisperer. Buck Brannaman, who served as a technical advisor to Redford, doesn’t call himself that, which is just as well. It sounds kind of new age-y to me, as if Brannaman is some kind of magician speaking incantations into the ears of wayward horses. In fact, Brannaman makes his specialty—not so much people with horse problems, but, as he says, horse with people problems—seem as down to earth as possible.
He says at one point that he doesn’t so much help people with horse problems as horses with people problems, and it isn’t new age-y because you can see the way he does it, amazing even seasoned horse people. In revealing Brannaman’s own difficult childhood, the film draws an obvious but nonetheless moving parallel between the ways animals and humans alike are mistreated. Brannaman’s gift is not magic either, as his own transformation comes with the help of others. I am not a lover of horses or animal stories, but this human story was unexpectedly captivating.
viewed 6/13/11 at Ritz East [PFS screening] and reviewed 6/24/11 and 8/9/11
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