Spirit: L'étalon des plaines

In a time when Hollywood is making money by showing our weaknesses, despair, crime, drugs, and war, along comes this film which reminds us the concept of the "Indomitable Spirit". If you are feeling beaten down, this movie will free your mind and set you soaring. We all know how tough life can be, sometime we need to be reminded that persistence and courage will get us through. That's what this film did for me and I hope it will for you.

SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON, the new animated feature from Dreamworks, is an honest-to-God western. Some of you may be forgiven for thinking it was just a horse movie, a distinct and definable genre in its own right (e.g. MY FRIEND FLICKA), but I assure you this is a real, bonafide western, complete with cavalry, Indians, Monument Valley and the building of the transcontinental railroad. It's a familiar saga (to western fans) but told here from the point-of-view of a wild horse. It just may be the only western that children in today's audience will get to see on the big screen. (And it's perfectly suitable for even the smallest children.)

The movie has three selling points for people who are appalled at how childish and inane animated features in the U.S. have been over the last decade or so:

1) It's got a serious story. 2) The horses don't talk. 3) The horses don't sing.

The latter two functions are served by Spirit's first-person narration, voiced by Matt Damon and told in the past tense as a reminiscence, and several songs on the soundtrack written and performed by Bryan Adams. Neither of these elements were particularly necessary and the movie would have been better without them, although they aren't fatal. Hans Zimmer's excellent music score does a far more effective job in conveying, in dramatic and emotional terms, what the songs belabor. But, thankfully, aside from Damon, there are no other celebrity voices.

The other big selling point is the artwork. The background art and western landscapes are stunning and offer a mix of painted scenes and computer-created scenery, although everything seems computer enhanced in one way or another. Most importantly, the film gives us a chance to savor the backgrounds. The characters don't zip around in constant frenetic motion the way they do in Disney movies. Although there are several chase scenes, the characters are just as likely to pause and connect with each other in movements reflecting naturalistic behavior. There are moments of gentleness, tenderness, curiosity, and discovery, so we get to see the space the characters are in and get to connect with it ourselves. There's a real palpable sense of environment and geography, of time and place, something rarely found in American animated features.

The character design is also well-done. The human characters all have solid, expressive, recognizable faces, strongly differentiated from each other. The horses are well designed also, looking like horses, but anthropomorphised enough to give them recognizable emotional responses. No character, human or animal, is exaggerated for cartoon effect.

I normally have problems with digital animation and computer created imagery and SPIRIT is, for the most part, computer created, although it replicates the look of traditional 2-D animation. Still, if this is the wave of the future, then SPIRIT shows us how it should be done. This is digital animation at the best I've ever seen it (including the Japanese anime features I've seen in the last few years). And combined with a good story and clean concept that doesn't patronize its audience, it's created what I think is the finest American animated feature since BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (1991). If there is any significant flaw in SPIRIT, aside from the songs, it's that the story falls short of greatness, undercut by the lack of a sufficiently emotional payoff. Still, it's a better story than any I've seen in an American animated production since at least THE LION KING. Some viewers may quibble about the politically correct aspects of the story (cavalry=bad, Indians=good), but there is a moment near the end that balances things out in an intelligent, dramatic way.

SPIRIT may suffer at the boxoffice because it doesn't have the all-important lowest-common-denominator touches that have so cheapened the animated genre but attracted audiences looking for easy laughs (e.g. celebrity voices doing hyperactive genies, show-tune-singing meerkats and jive-talking jackasses). But it should give a measure of hope to that small, passionate segment of the audience that cares about animation as a medium capable in its own right of great storytelling and cinematic artistry.

There's no song and dance numbers, and the ponies don't break out into song whenever they're blue or lonely. That's enough to rate this film very highly. The storyline has a lot of symbolism in it, from the captivity of Spirit as well as that of the other horses, and the 'lessons' the movie tries to teach us in the bad guy vs the good guy, the bad guy being Army, and the good guy being Lakota. You'll like the movie. It'll make you think, and your kids will adore it.

Why do people who already have a preconceived notion of what is an acceptable amount of tenderness in a film write reviews for films like "Spirit"? I have one message to anyone with a blindly scathing opinion of this film: if you just don't like children's films, or if you have the rigidness of mind that makes it impossible for you to go back to a time of greater innocence, DO NOT REVIEW THIS FILM! Please.

That said, I can continue that "Spirit" is extraordinary. The animation is technically impressive, from the opening shot to the locomotive scene at the end. The storytelling is straightforward and pure, yet has many totally original moments that combine with the more formulaic, tried and true story elements. Objectively speaking, you can see that a great deal of time and money went into making the movie something that would stand a little taller than its competitors.

Sadly, "Spirit" suffers from its subject matter in a way unfair to the film itself. The film will likely appeal more to the sensitive (read: women, girls and young boys) than a general audience. The story is about a horse, and that means it is NOT likely to have lots of guns, swordplay, singing animals, characters saying, "It's all my fault", or distinct good vs. evil. My word, what happens when someone is courageous enough to make a movie that so deviates from tried and true storytelling devices? The answer: they don't make as much money as the recyclers at the Mouse.

"Spirit" was outshone and outmarketed by "Lilo and Stitch" and did not have nearly as long a run as a result. Guess who lost out because of that? You did, very likely. I saw this in the theater and on home DVD. "Spirit" loses an enormous amount of its power going to the small screen. The opening panoramic, long shot behind the eagle is reduced to a clever camera trick. And the experience of being engulfed in the thunder and masterfully recreated power of the galloping herd of mustangs is reduced to a moment of natural drama and little else. If you missed this movie during the summer of 2002, it is little wonder why you might overlook (or worse, pan) this magnificent milestone in animation.

See "Spirit" with an open mind. Enjoy its fresh take on the Bambi/Kimba/animal adventure tale. If you can, watch it with *children* so you can get a glimpse at the magic that they can easily see in this superior film. When it's over, take a moment and imagine what imagination and heart went into creating this film.

And if you still cannot decide favorably on it at all, watch "Scary Movie" or something that appeals better to your sense of intelligence and taste.

If only ALL animation was this great. This film is classic because it is strong is two simple aspects: Story and Character. The characters in this film are beautifully personified. I felt for all of the characters, and human-animal relationship in the movie works perfectly. The beautiful animation and 3-D computer animation hasn't worked better in any other film. This is a great movie for kids, and for adults who want a classic hero's journey. 8 of 10.