Some people may view this movie as a simple 'horse and boy' adventure film for children but I think it is much more than that. This film can easily be appreciated by adults and sensitive children on a more subtle and metaphorical level (and if anyone misses this point, one of the supporting characters helpfully spells it out about three-quarters of the way through the film!) One reviewer here compares 'The Black' with Death. I have to disagree with this interesting but flawed analysis which is due in part perhaps to the colour of the horse. To me, 'The Black' is not Death but Fate. Capricious, unknowable, unexpected and impossible to control, 'The Black' is all of these things - as is Life. He may be many things to many people, but he is not an indiscriminate destroyer. To Alec, the horse becomes protector and guardian although 'The Black' is capable of great destruction should he wish it. Alec suffers a huge loss, but it is the chance gift of this mysterious horse that points the way back to Life for him rather than to a descent into despair and Death.
The magical horse crosses Alec's path and the boy's life is changed forever. The life he has known (one imagines a familiar childhood of imposed order) is literally swept away and the boy finds himself in an isolated, uncompromising, yet very beautiful wilderness. Seeing the wonderful and unusual treatment this movie was given by Carroll Ballard and his team and the captivating first hour (which is an almost silent ballet), we can also see 'The Black' (and those wonderful Sardinian locations masquerading as a small island) as Nature personified.
At first the horse appears and disappears without explanation. He both requires Alec's help and saves the boy's life (something of a metaphor for the interdependence between man and nature right there of itself). Is the horse a friend or a threat? Alec could choose to destroy 'The Black' to survive for a while, but decides on a different path - a decision that transforms both his own life and ripples out to transform the lives of many others around him. Yet Alec never tames the horse - 'The Black' allows a trust to develop between himself and the boy. The horse allows himself to be touched, to be ridden and to be trusted. One wonders if only a child could have made that leap of faith. There is almost a sense that the two of them, horse and boy, left together for what we suppose to be several weeks, become a kind of single entity, dependent upon each other for both companionship and survival in a timeless world of primal beauty.
I cannot think of anything I have ever seen either in real life or in the imagined world of cinema that has been so effective at presenting an idealised and poetic vision of the interaction of Man with Nature as the first hour of this film.
Alec's return to our so-called 'civilisation' is sudden and almost painful. We a torn away from a world of magical sunsets, turquoise seas and white sand beaches and are cast down into the mundane and the ordinary. The boy's spirit is once more constrained by a world of routine and by the will of others, but his path is not to be consigned to that forgotten domesticity. Fate has touched him, and the boy's destiny lies elsewhere. Alec is keeping an elemental Nature Spirit in his suburban backyard and it cannot and will not be contained. The boy's destiny awaits him and Fate will take Alec far from these confined surroundings and on to greatness whether he wills it or not.
I first saw this movie when I was nine years old and it worked its way immediately and irrevocably into my psyche as you can probably tell. It continues to be a very powerful work of art - as magical to me now as it was to that nine-year-old boy who spent a magical two hours in that movie theatre all those years ago.
Greg
The magical horse crosses Alec's path and the boy's life is changed forever. The life he has known (one imagines a familiar childhood of imposed order) is literally swept away and the boy finds himself in an isolated, uncompromising, yet very beautiful wilderness. Seeing the wonderful and unusual treatment this movie was given by Carroll Ballard and his team and the captivating first hour (which is an almost silent ballet), we can also see 'The Black' (and those wonderful Sardinian locations masquerading as a small island) as Nature personified.
At first the horse appears and disappears without explanation. He both requires Alec's help and saves the boy's life (something of a metaphor for the interdependence between man and nature right there of itself). Is the horse a friend or a threat? Alec could choose to destroy 'The Black' to survive for a while, but decides on a different path - a decision that transforms both his own life and ripples out to transform the lives of many others around him. Yet Alec never tames the horse - 'The Black' allows a trust to develop between himself and the boy. The horse allows himself to be touched, to be ridden and to be trusted. One wonders if only a child could have made that leap of faith. There is almost a sense that the two of them, horse and boy, left together for what we suppose to be several weeks, become a kind of single entity, dependent upon each other for both companionship and survival in a timeless world of primal beauty.
I cannot think of anything I have ever seen either in real life or in the imagined world of cinema that has been so effective at presenting an idealised and poetic vision of the interaction of Man with Nature as the first hour of this film.
Alec's return to our so-called 'civilisation' is sudden and almost painful. We a torn away from a world of magical sunsets, turquoise seas and white sand beaches and are cast down into the mundane and the ordinary. The boy's spirit is once more constrained by a world of routine and by the will of others, but his path is not to be consigned to that forgotten domesticity. Fate has touched him, and the boy's destiny lies elsewhere. Alec is keeping an elemental Nature Spirit in his suburban backyard and it cannot and will not be contained. The boy's destiny awaits him and Fate will take Alec far from these confined surroundings and on to greatness whether he wills it or not.
I first saw this movie when I was nine years old and it worked its way immediately and irrevocably into my psyche as you can probably tell. It continues to be a very powerful work of art - as magical to me now as it was to that nine-year-old boy who spent a magical two hours in that movie theatre all those years ago.
Greg