Film
Unbridled inspiration
In Seabiscuit, three individualists and a scrawny, ill-tempered horse display a nation's spirit and optimism amid the Depression and win their American dreams.
By STEVE PERSALL, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published July 24, 2003
 |
|
[Photos: Universal Pictures]
|
Seabiscuit, ridden by Tobey Maguire, conquers the track, turning a dubious racing career into a mixture of equine fairy tale and American folk legend.
|
 |
Tobey Maguire, Chris Cooper and Jeff Bridges, from left, as Johnny “Red” Pollard, Tom Smith and Charles Howard, form a rewarding friendship and partnership in Seabiscuit.
|
|
|
 |
Oversized for a jockey and half-blind, Johnny “Red” Pollard (Tobey Maguire) rides Seabiscuit, a longshot himself, to victory.
|
Once upon a horse's back . . .
The book on which the film Seabiscuit is based offers larger helpings of the warmth, wonder and nail-biting tension that are the movie's hallmarks.
|
Each pampered, overpaid athlete and greedy team owner, regardless of his sport, should see Gary Ross' Seabiscuit to experience the mythology of athleticism that they're trashing today. They don't make champions like they used to.
Certainly not champions with the unwavering decency displayed by a broken-down racehorse and his emotionally damaged owner, jockey and trainer in the midst of a national catastrophe, the Great Depression. In those days, everyone desperately needed a second chance. Millions of Americans found it, if only vicariously, in the efforts of four noble creatures with no business being where they were, who succeeded against the odds, on the tote board and in life.
If the story of Seabiscuit hadn't been true, a Hollywood screenwriter might have concocted it and been laughed out of every studio pitch meeting for writing something so far-fetched. Truth isn't always stranger than fiction, but it's more inspiring. Even when Ross, as writer and director, veers toward the overly sentimental or downright unbelievable, one can't help but admire these characters and the rousing movie built around them.
Seabiscuit is more than a film about unlikely champions, a cinematic cliche since Rocky Balboa laced up his boxing gloves. It's also a brisk American history lesson, regularly drawing parallels between the bad breaks and persistent dreams of Seabiscuit's camp and the nation at large. The horse doesn't even appear until 40 minutes into the movie, after David McCullough's narrative voice, archival images and introductions to the main characters' - and the nation's - problems are complete.
We meet Charles Howard (Jeff Bridges), a bicycle repairman turned auto sales tycoon just before the economic bust. Charles is a dreamer; he knew the value of horsepower over horses before practically anyone, waxing poetic about a grander future (although he couldn't guess that it would occur after devastating tragedy) by reverting from cars back to a horse.
Meanwhile, a taciturn drifter named Tom Smith (Chris Cooper) is missing the frontier that businessmen like Charles are causing to disappear. There doesn't appear to be anyplace left where he can ply his near-mystical awareness of what makes horses run.
There's also Johnny "Red" Pollard (Tobey Maguire), turned over by his parents to a racehorse trainer when the boy displays a natural ability in the saddle. Too big by traditional riding standards, and half-blind, Red seems destined to be another Depression-era photograph subject, gaunt and dejected, yet curiously prideful.
Then along comes Seabiscuit. Tom is the first to recognize something special in this undersized, ill-tempered horse. Charles sees something equally promising in Red, who warily begins to regard the other two men as the parental figures he has lost. Something more than chance brings them together; it's a fateful convergence of bruised karmas, each finding a salve in the other.
The results of their partnership are predictable, especially to readers of Laura Hillenbrand's book Seabiscuit: An American Legend. Whatever material Ross had to trim for cinematic flow is regrettable. Yet Ross, cinematographer John Schwartzman and an army of set and costume designers give visual life to Hillenbrand's descriptive prose, crafting each shot with superb period detail. The overall effect is so much "of its time" that when an overhead view of a horse race appears, it feels out of place simply because filmmakers in the 1930s couldn't manage such a shot.
And although it's occasionally overemphasized, Randy Newman's musical score, like his work for The Natural and Ragtime, is perfectly in tune with the maudlin and the majestic aspects of the story.
Bridges is in fine form as Charles, recalling the frisky decency and optimism of his role in Tucker: The Man and His Dream. Maguire's emoting shakes off those Spider-Man cobwebs to take command of the film's most richly dramatic role. And Cooper is simply marvelous, a polar opposite of his Oscar-winning redneck role in Adaptation, yet equally magnetic. High praise also goes to William H. Macy, whose turn as a wisecracking sportscaster (created for the movie) provides ample comic relief and a conduit between the horse and his legion of fans.
There may be one too many speeches about the indomitable American spirit, plus a few incidents begging for more depth. But Ross' screenplay, especially its smart use of McCullough's narration, deserves all the loving attention bestowed by the actors and crew. Now Ross needs an audience to pay attention, too. The early line makes Seabiscuit an odds-on favorite to be remembered at awards time. Step up to the ticket window and place your bets.
Seabiscuit
Grade: A
Director: Gary Ross
Cast: Jeff Bridges, Tobey Maguire, Chris Cooper, William H. Macy, Elizabeth Banks, Gary Stevens, Ed Lauter, Gianni Russo
Screenplay: Gary Ross, based on the book Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand
Rating: PG-13; profanity, violence, sensuality
Running time: 140 min.
© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111
|
