[Originally written for Film.com, 1998]
Set the wayback machine to 1998. Parallax View presents reviews of films released 20 years ago, written by our contributors for various papers and websites. Most of these have not been available for years.
Except for a final helicopter shot, our last glimpse of Robert Redford in The Horse Whisperer finds the star enjoying a pensive moment of mixed emotions. It’s the kind of wordless, ambiguous grace note that real movie stars are so good at evoking, a look in the eyes that conveys a dozen different feelings tugging at the same brain pan.
There are other such moments in The Horse Whisperer, but they all belong to Kristin Scott Thomas; Redford, directing himself for the first time, retreats into a mythic Marlboro Man stance until that intriguing climactic shot. For most of his performance, he’s either perched loftily at the edge of a valley or the foot of a mountain peak, and as often as not the sun is catching the still-golden tones in his ageless hair. This approach turns the movie into a handsome still life, bloodless and schematic. It’s particularly odd because so much of the film is given over to an Ordinary People-style psychological excavation, which doesn’t jibe especially well with the old-fashioned stoicism of the traditional cowboy.
