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last night i was so dead from a long day working and class and cooking for nine (for today), that i settled in to watch, yes, an animated film: Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron.
i like horse stories. I read all the Chincotegues and Black Beauty and Justin Morgan and secretly had a yen for My Little Ponies though by the time they came out, i was too old to seriously want one (and looking back i wonder: what was i thinking anyway?). i secretly envied my cousin's vast collection of Breyers.
but back to the movie: this one had some possibilities artwise, but is crippled by an overuse of very uneven cgi (some scenes are well executed and others, like one in which a train falls down a mountain) just look like crap. the hans zimmer score is decent, but the bryan adams songs don't do much for it. loved the color palette for the film. i'll give it that. i could probably look at it all day. i also had to look up whether the model for the horse was Jersey (who played Cisco in Dances with Wolves), but it wasn't. i've always liked buckskins with black points.
anyway, storywise the movie is poor. it's also the worst kind of revisionist, relativistic pc side-taking ~ something i like to call an overindulgence in "white swinery". this is the gratuitous premise that all white men are evil and dirty and greedy. it's a very obstinate, myopic view of western expansion as entirely genocidal and that the army is populated with the worst of the worst, without any basis in reason (Dances with Wolves goes this route, as does Glory to some extent ~ and countless other films that get carried away with trying to depict racism, which is why a film like Crash is so amazing. i think it finally gets it right).
now, i'll be the first to admit that i have indulged in this sort of depiction in my own writing from time to time because i have strong feelings about the evil aspects of Manifest Destiny and the native genocide in this country which ought to be criticized. i wrote a 900 page novel that was so steeped in white-swinery it made me sick to read it ~ i mean, where's the hope of salvation if all conquering nations are just pigs? nothing excuses the behavior of white soldiers in the west, but a little education will go a long way to explain it (even if its in terms we would have a very difficult time conceiving of by modern standards).
so there's got to be some balance somewhere and this film is not only not going to present that balance, but it takes the lopsidedness one further (and this, i think, is where it really fails). Spirit, the titular horse is captured by white swine, refuses to be broken by cruel soldiers, but eventually forms a bond with an young oppressed Lakota (because indians didn't use horses as pack animals or tether them if need be, or saddle them, etc. ~ yeah, that and there's a bridge for sale in frisco.)
in the end, Spirit doesn't trade in his freedom for domesticity, but the rosy conclusion leaves you daftly feeling like nothing has been resolved except that the horse has affected his escape and brought a girl horse along with him. not sure how this makes him a hero. his blowing up the train isn't going to stop the railroad. honestly, what in the world is the message of this story? fleeting victory is sufficient? it's been a long long time since i've seen the disney film Comanche (which for some reason begs a comparison even though they only really have a horse caught between two worlds in common), but as a child i firmly recall it being a lot more fair-handed (i could be wrong, but that was my impression then).
i know some of you will think i am overanalyzing this, but kids aren't stupid and the mixed (and categorically biased) messages in this film are confounding, misleading, and as superficial as that crusty dead skin that those little microbes eat off your face every night.
and that's why i give this one a 7 for the visuals and 3 for the rest of it.
happy happy horsie
i like horse stories. I read all the Chincotegues and Black Beauty and Justin Morgan and secretly had a yen for My Little Ponies though by the time they came out, i was too old to seriously want one (and looking back i wonder: what was i thinking anyway?). i secretly envied my cousin's vast collection of Breyers.
but back to the movie: this one had some possibilities artwise, but is crippled by an overuse of very uneven cgi (some scenes are well executed and others, like one in which a train falls down a mountain) just look like crap. the hans zimmer score is decent, but the bryan adams songs don't do much for it. loved the color palette for the film. i'll give it that. i could probably look at it all day. i also had to look up whether the model for the horse was Jersey (who played Cisco in Dances with Wolves), but it wasn't. i've always liked buckskins with black points.
anyway, storywise the movie is poor. it's also the worst kind of revisionist, relativistic pc side-taking ~ something i like to call an overindulgence in "white swinery". this is the gratuitous premise that all white men are evil and dirty and greedy. it's a very obstinate, myopic view of western expansion as entirely genocidal and that the army is populated with the worst of the worst, without any basis in reason (Dances with Wolves goes this route, as does Glory to some extent ~ and countless other films that get carried away with trying to depict racism, which is why a film like Crash is so amazing. i think it finally gets it right).
now, i'll be the first to admit that i have indulged in this sort of depiction in my own writing from time to time because i have strong feelings about the evil aspects of Manifest Destiny and the native genocide in this country which ought to be criticized. i wrote a 900 page novel that was so steeped in white-swinery it made me sick to read it ~ i mean, where's the hope of salvation if all conquering nations are just pigs? nothing excuses the behavior of white soldiers in the west, but a little education will go a long way to explain it (even if its in terms we would have a very difficult time conceiving of by modern standards).
so there's got to be some balance somewhere and this film is not only not going to present that balance, but it takes the lopsidedness one further (and this, i think, is where it really fails). Spirit, the titular horse is captured by white swine, refuses to be broken by cruel soldiers, but eventually forms a bond with an young oppressed Lakota (because indians didn't use horses as pack animals or tether them if need be, or saddle them, etc. ~ yeah, that and there's a bridge for sale in frisco.)
in the end, Spirit doesn't trade in his freedom for domesticity, but the rosy conclusion leaves you daftly feeling like nothing has been resolved except that the horse has affected his escape and brought a girl horse along with him. not sure how this makes him a hero. his blowing up the train isn't going to stop the railroad. honestly, what in the world is the message of this story? fleeting victory is sufficient? it's been a long long time since i've seen the disney film Comanche (which for some reason begs a comparison even though they only really have a horse caught between two worlds in common), but as a child i firmly recall it being a lot more fair-handed (i could be wrong, but that was my impression then).
i know some of you will think i am overanalyzing this, but kids aren't stupid and the mixed (and categorically biased) messages in this film are confounding, misleading, and as superficial as that crusty dead skin that those little microbes eat off your face every night.
and that's why i give this one a 7 for the visuals and 3 for the rest of it.
happy happy horsie
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and oh my word, i think we had the same illustrated book ~ hahahahaha ~
the scene of the indian boy throwing rocks at that horse trying to make it run away has stuck with me all of my days. it made me cry when i was a kid.
: D