06-07-02 @ 3:13 am EDT

I just posted this in a movie forum. May as well post it here too, this journal's been pretty durn quiet lately!

I saw this movie just last night. Yes, I admit it, I'm the person who usually goes to see the big animated flicks. I like cartoons. I would like to see Lilo & Stitch next, for example. I don't go to the movies often as it is; The Time Machine a few months back was the last one I saw!

But anyway. I went to Spirit expecting good animation and a mediocre plot. And that was pretty much what I got, so I can't say I'm TERRIBLY disappointed. After watching so many of the big animated flicks, I've come to see "The Pattern" of most of them, so that when I saw Disney's Dinosaur, for example, I could tell ahead of time which character would die, what would happen at the end, etc. Have you noticed that in many of the recent Disney cartoons they end with a big rainstorm and the hero climbing up to some high place to claim his territory, for example? (The Lion King, Tarzan, Beauty & The Beast too, I think. Etc.)

Spirit wasn't much different. And after feeding off of so many Disney movies, even the animation wasn't something that had me going "Ooh" and "aah." Granted, the graphics were pretty good, especially in the opening sequence. I think I heard this movie was done entirely or at least mostly by hand? It's difficult to tell sometimes with moving backgrounds that look like CGI from the more expensive movies. Trees and canyons and rivers literally look like 3D. The horses each have their different characteristics so you can tell them apart--Spirit with his almost native features (yellow/coppery fur and dark mane), Rain with her Roman nose, the twin colts, a native horse with a blue ring painted around its eye. And the colors are fantastic. (Does "purple mountains majesty" ring a bell? It should, in this movie.)

It's a bonus that the numerous (VERY numerous) Bryan Adams songs didn't irritate me nearly as much as I thought they would. They weren't too sappy, and managed to convey what the characters were feeling. I'm not a big Bryan Adams fan, but at least hearing one of those wouldn't make me run from the room or turn off the radio. I wish there was more sweeping score to it, like in the Disney movies. (I buy Disney soundtracks for the scores! Yes, the songs are often good, but listen to those SCORES!)

And the plot? Well...it was all right, considering. There isn't much to the story: Spirit is simply a wild horse who longs to remain free. That's about it. He faces some problems with this, especially after his encounter with cavalry troops, but you know how these movies always end. So I needn't go into any serious detail. There is a sad note to a story about a free creature that people are so willing to break, and break badly, and I think this may be where the movie is flawed. It didn't make enough use of this theme. When the movie started, and a herd of wild horses galloped straight toward the viewer, one of my first thoughts was, "It's pretty sad that these creatures are almost nonexistent in the wild now." With what I'd read about the film before seeing it, I figured this would be a heavy emphasis. And it is the main theme, but they don't explore it deeply enough.

Look at it this way: A horse being broken is similar to a person being tortured and brainwashed. I know that I'm really exaggerating things--how can you brainwash a horse?--but this is what the movie would lead you to believe. All throughout it we're subjected to images of wild and tamed horses in contrast, and the tame horses always, ALWAYS look sad and defeated. Spirit's very first encounter with a broken horse depicts this nicely, when it tries to warn him to run before it's too late. You can SEE the shame in the cavalry troops' horses' eyes when they're forced to capture Spirit and drag him down. They don't want to do this. They're only doing it because they have no choice. They were broken long ago.

Likewise, when Spirit defies the soldiers trying to ride him in the corral--whenever he bucks one of his riders, and snorts in defiance, the tame horses cheer him on. I had goofy thoughts of him freeing them all and leading some kind of horsey rebellion. (Suffice it to say...I actually wasn't that far from the truth!)

What does Spirit have to put up with in the movie? Firstly he's captured by the cavalry, who go through numerous attempts to break him. Then he's "captured" by the natives. ("Just when I managed to get free...more ropes!" he grouses, or something to that extent.) Then he's captured again, and again, and again, you get the picture. After all of this, wouldn't YOU want to just give in?

Spirit does...for a short time. A vision during a train ride changes his mind. My eyes watered up during that scene, and it was pretty well done, but I think they took the easy way out.

Why? Just face it. A creature, when tortured and beaten enough, will react in one of two ways: By turning upon its captors (as Spirit does), or by cowering in defeat (as the other horses do, for a time). But even Spirit's defiance doesn't ring true. Every time he bucks one of his potential riders, instead of reacting in rage or humiliation, he gives a self-satisfied smirk and flares his nostrils as if to say, "Take THAT, stupid human!" No matter how many times he's beaten down, he carries that same smirk. If you were beaten and betrayed enough times, would you feel so self-confident as to smirk in the face of danger? I would think one would react by screaming (or whinnying) with rage, or by breaking down. Spirit NEARLY does...but not quite. He has a vision, and a miraculous recovery. I know that the theme of the film is that a wild thing can never truly be broken, but this is the reality: It CAN be. With everything Spirit goes through, I think he would have at least ended up seriously disillusioned, if not traumatized. By the end, he's saddened that he's had to give some things up in his life, but he appears to bear no shame or mental scars from what he was put through. THAT I find difficult to believe.

A human, which is a rational, thinking animal, will at least bear some pained memories of torture, brainwashing, abuse, and humiliation. A horse is not as intelligent as a human, but I believe even animals remember what they've gone through, and learn from it. (In fact it's been proven--how else do you break horses?) They may not bear psychological scars as greatly as humans do, but you'll still encounter shy, skittish horses who dislike being around people, who bite and buck and kick and cower. Spirit does grow to distrust humans, to an extent. But at the end, with his final encounter with the enemy...how does he react? With fury, remembering the torments he's lived through? With shame or guilt? No, he...gives a self-satisfied smirk and toss of his head, and goes on his merry way.

When all is said and done, do you know who I sympathized with most during this movie? It wasn't Spirit, the main character...nor Rain, the va-va-voom mare he falls for; nor Little Creek, the Lakota tribesman who saves him; nor the cavalry soldiers, or the cutesy little colts, or Spirit's mother or any of his herd or the native horses or even that weird eagle that keeps following him around wherever he goes. ("Someone shoot that bird!" as my mom whispered.)

Who I sympathized with most was the cavalry horses, with their cropped manes, drooping heads, branded shoulders, and pained eyes. From the moment you first see them, they're the most realistic characters in the movie. THEY feel what I expected Spirit to feel, and what he did feel, but all too briefly, during his train ride. They even try to warn him (and granted, he himself tries to pass the warning on to the native horses): "You might end up like us. Run while you can!" (They never speak, but you can see it in their eyes, and hear it in their neighs. Yes--the horses in this movie do not talk. But you can still tell everything they're saying.) They have been truly broken, at least for the time being. They look identical, each one a carbon copy of the next. They all bear ugly brands and bridles and even their colors are drab and washed out, not at all like the multicolored horses of the natives or of Spirit's herd. They've all been made to be alike--like soldiers, cult members, laborers--they've been broken. As I said before, when Spirit first meets them, he's surprised by their appearance--their warnings to him go unheeded. They stand tied to a post, their heads hanging; at first they don't even take notice of him, and when they do, their eyes dart nervously from side to side. When in the corral, they watch his defiance with open surprise--perhaps they themselves went through the same thing, yet it was so long ago they can't remember it very well, and none of them ever made it, like he did. And in every scene where they were forced to help capture him, I felt sorriest not for Spirit but for THEM, having to turn so awfully upon one of their own kind.

One is reminded of the phrases "I was only following orders!" and "They said they'd kill me if I didn't do it!" We've heard stories of people forced by torture into hurting other people, just to survive. The shame these horses bear must be great indeed--THAT was what I expected to see, and never did, in Spirit, and what made me not sympathize with him very much. He was just too shallow. He remained TOO unbroken.

I know, I know, that was the point of the movie...but I think the plot failed a bit because of it. Even in The Lion King (Disney again!), after Mufasa's death, you can see the pain always in Simba's eyes, the loss of his innocence. Why didn't Spirit ever lose his innocence? Just a little bit? He did during the train ride, but then gained it back with no mental scars to bear. Not very believable. Even Simba, after being vindicated, still bore that saddened, resigned look, that told the viewer, "I'm not who I used to be. I never will be again."

Tragedy and trauma change people, and they change animals. Spirit was pretty much unchanged. Like I keep harping, I don't believe it! A static character, one who is unchanged, is not very likable. A dynamic character, one who is forever changed by his circumstances, is MUCH more realistic, more like us. Easier to sympathize with, to know. It's easier to feel the pain of a dynamic character as our own pain. THAT is what movies try to do, every time they come out with a new release. Spirit could have done better.

And now that I've nagged (no pun intended) on that point for so very long :) , here is my final complaint about the movie. Spirit's animation style. He's a good-looking horse--TOO good looking! There were FAR too many face-on shots of him staring intently at the camera with wide, innocent eyes, and the whole beginning sequence with him as a young colt was just so disgustingly cutesy that I was actually thinking, "I can't wait until those soldiers show up and try to break him! He's too darn cute!!" Points to Dreamworks for showing his mother GIVING BIRTH TO HIM! (the first time in a kiddie cartoon that I've seen ANYTHING giving birth--yagh!!), but points deducted for him being so very cutesy right from his very first moment. (She didn't even have to lick him off!--and after just one tumble, he was up and on his feet without a problem!) Cue lots of shots of him grinning goofily at the camera with large dark eyes, cute little ears, and a toothy little mouth. AAAAGGGGGHHHH! Even as an adult and leader of his herd, he bears that same "Aren't I adorable!!" quality that made me wonder, "Does he REALLY have what it takes to protect all those other horses?" Even Simba and Nala in The Lion King ("Why does Tehuti keep mentioning that movie!!") had their not-too-photogenic moments. (Anyone remember the ugly look on Nala's face when she went after Pumbaa? And the equally ugly look Simba got when he attacked her? At least in those moments, they were realistic. Lions are not always cute creatures, and the same holds for horses!)

Spirit comes dangerously close to being a cardboard cutout. He escapes that fate, but only by a hair. Once more I think of the train scene, when he came closest to being truly broken. That was the one point of the movie where he was most realistic, and when I sympathized with him the most. That was why my eyes watered up then. He looked like one of the cavalry horses, rejecting the high-spirited encouragement of the captured native horses along with him, and I could feel his shame and humiliation.

By the end of the movie, that feeling was pretty much gone. Pity!

All right, I've harped enough, just pointing out the same thing over and over. (Maybe it's because so much of my writing focuses on characters who have been permanently damaged by the torments they've been put through, that to see it so easily glossed over in a movie just bugs me!) Apologies for that, I've never been succinct, nor do I really give movie reviews so this probably sucks. :) I usually just say I like it or I hate it. With Spirit, I would have to say, it was okay, but I can't really take anything home from it, at least not from the main character...which is kind of sad. It's sad when you sympathize more with the secondary or background characters!

If anyone else really liked the movie, I also apologize for sounding so harsh, but I really do believe Dreamworks had the chance to make a deeper point ("You may not be broken, but you can be bent") and failed, focusing instead on a more simplistic point. ("You can never truly be broken!"...I beg to differ. Those cavalry horses proved the movie's theme wrong--until Spirit went and set them free!! Would they even remember how to live in the wild...?) It wasn't a lousy movie, just not as deep or stirring as I thought it could be.

I'd have to give it a B-, B at the best. And that, mostly for the animation and those cavalry horses.

Tar for now, I think I'd be too afraid to read any possible responses to this!! :)