WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2026
...and soothe the wounds they found there:" The gruesome news from Cornell has had us thinking about one of our favorite movies.
Rather, it's had us thinking about one part of that high profile film. The film in question is The Horse Whisperer. Here's the start of the overview from the leading authority:
The Horse Whisperer
The Horse Whisperer is a 1998 American neo-western drama film directed by and starring Robert Redford, based on the 1995 novel The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans. Redford plays the title role, a talented trainer with a remarkable gift for understanding horses, who is hired to help an injured teenager (played by Scarlett Johansson) and her horse back to health following a tragic accident.
The film was produced by Touchstone Pictures and released on May 15, 1998 by Buena Vista Pictures Distribution. It received generally positive reviews from critics and grossed nearly $187 million worldwide.
Johansson was 13 when the firm was made. Continuing directly from above, here's the start of the plot:
Plot
In Lake Luzerne, New York, teenagers Grace MacLean and her best friend Judith go out early one winter's morning to ride their horses, Pilgrim and Gulliver. As they ride up an icy slope, Gulliver slips and hits Pilgrim. Both horses fall, dragging the girls onto a road, where they are hit by a tractor-trailer. Judith and Gulliver are killed, while Grace and Pilgrim are severely injured.
Grace, left with a partially amputated right leg, is bitter and withdrawn after the accident. Meanwhile, Pilgrim is traumatized and uncontrollable to the extent that it is suggested he be put down. Grace's mother Annie, a strong-minded, workaholic magazine editor, refuses to allow it, sensing that Grace's recovery is linked with Pilgrim's.
Desperate for a way to heal Grace and Pilgrim, Annie tracks down a "horse whisperer," Tom Booker, in the remote Montana mountains...
And so on from there.
That's how the authority sees it. We refer to the part of the film where the Redford character saves the emotional life of the girl, rather than the part of the film in which he falls in love with her mother.
Focusing on that part of the film, we're not sure we've ever seen a film which was more deeply humane. We've thought of the Redford character's concern for the girl as we've followed the disgraceful news from the Ivy League this past week.
Intriguing point: In its broad outlines, The Horse Whisperer is a virtual remake of Redford's first film as a director, Ordinary People (1980).
In that earlier film, a tortured teenager (Timothy Hutton) is struggling with the death of his older brother in a terrible boating accident. In The Horse Whisperer, Grace—she seems to be as young as 13—is struggling with the death of her best friend, and with terrible injuries to herself and to her horse
In the more literal earlier film, the Hutton character is saved by the intercession of a caring psychiatrist. In The Horse Whisperer, the tortured teenage girl is fortunate enough to encounter the Redford character "in the remote Montana mountains," which turns out to be a very good place to be.
Early on, we see Grace's mother searching for someone who might be able to save the traumatized horse. She stumbles upon this bit of text describing an ancient separation between two branches of creation:
A million years before man, they grazed the vast and empty plains, living by voices only they could hear. They first came to know man as the hunted knows the hunter, for long before he used horses for his labors, he killed them for meat.
The alliance with man would forever be fragile, for the fear he'd struck into their hearts was too deep to be dislodged.
Since that Neolithic moment when a horse was first haltered, there were those among men who understood this. They could see into the creature's soul and soothe the wounds they found there. For secrets uttered softly into troubled ears, these men were known as "the whisperers."
Early in the film, the girl's mother (Kristin Scott Thomas) comes upon that text in a book, along with a profile of Booker. To see that evocative moment from the film, you can click right here.
The whisperers were able to see into a troubled creature's soul. When the mother and girl arrive in Montana, hoping that the Redford character would be able to cure the traumatized horse, the Redford character was able to see that it was really the suffering child who was most in need of help.
He's so humane that he sets out to provide that help, even though she was the girl.
Traumatized by her friend's death and by the injuries to herself and to her horse, the tormented child in this second film (Grace) is disappearing inside herself. Eventually, she confesses to the Redford character (Booker) that she feels responsible for her friend's death in the fatal accident, in which her horse reared up against an incoming truck.
Afte her confession, the Redford character tells her a story about a local Montana kid who was paralyzed in a terrible swimming accident, then seemed to disappear inside himself.
"I know where he goes," the girl says. Along the way, the Redford character is decent enough and humane enough to tell her this:
BOOKER: I won't tell you it'll stop feeling this bad. But I will tell you, you didn't do anything wrong. The same thing would have happened to me—or to Frank, or to Joey. And it doesn't make any sense to try to figure out why these things happen.
[...]
BOOKER: It's like the boy I knew just went away somewhere.
GRACE: I know where he goes.
BOOKER: I know you do. Don't you disappear. You do whatever you have to do to hold on.
I'll tell you one more thing. When Pilgrim reared up to face that truck, you know what I think? I think that damn horse loved you so much, he was trying to protect you. That's what I think.
In our view, you have to go a good long way to find a more humane presentation than that.
We admired Redford for making Ordinary People—for caring about the suffering of a suffering teenage boy, despite the fact that he was a giant big Hollywood star. We triply admired him for making a version of the same film, in which a deeply humane character—a whisperer, in this case to humans—was even willing and able to look into the soul of "the girl."
We've thought of that deeply humane character as we've followed the inexcusable news from Cornell. Also, we've thought about the terrible people running those elite universities, and we've thought about the squalor of the garbage can that gets rolled out every night on the Fox News Channel.
From there, it's on to the broadcasting Hall of Fame! Our rumination continues tomorrow.
Tomorrow: It's hard to find the words
