Secretariat isn't about a horse. Or a jockey. Or a trainer. It's about a horse owner, an upper-class housewife, with only her father's farm to lose. There's not much in jeopardy even if the film will relentlessly strive to assure you everything is under threat. Any number of animated Disney films do better at paying tribute to the animal. And Babe, Seabiscuit, My Dog Skip. This one venerates the person who owned it. Secretariat was a Time cover story. You don't sense that watching this. Rather than showcasing the greatest racehorse ever, they opted the rich owner could be the underdog. Merely a handful of times did it appear the filmmakers were truly fascinating by the beauty or nobility of the animal.
Instead, the entire film's overflowing with Diane Lane giving campaign speeches, beginning with her voice-over quoting the Bible. It continues with lines like, "You never know how far you can go unless you run!" She believes in Secretariat. Why? Because. I'm not saying belief's a bad thing, but there's insufficient elucidation for her determination.
An extraordinarily successful racehorse has been Disney-fied for escapist distraction. It's when reality's substituted and in its place the writer of Pearl Harbor and that of Radio and The Nativity Story exceed the boundary, enter melodrama. The imperious, domineering soundtrack distracts, oversweetens rather than keeping us absorbed or authentically uplifted. As near as I can distinguish there was no considerable tension between her and rival horseman Pancho Martin, owner of Secretariat's foremost challenger. He's a sexist blowhard. There's no background, so it just comes off as a performance. It'd seem it was felt the movie needed a bad guy.
The other non-white speaking role's Eddie, a black thoroughbred groom who's a member of a much more dangerous movie stereotype. He dances, sings, loves Jesus and that mighty ole horse. He's immediately deferential to "Miss Penny," induces soul and gospel music into her bothered life. The movie wants us to "believe" something? I believe that Eddie should've been the human character at the center. He spends more actual time, makes more physical contact with Secretariat than anyone else, knows him most deeply. If there's an underdog in this film at all, it's absolutely him. And he should've been given a three-dimensional characterization.
Like her horse, Penny's lucked out in life's sweepstakes. She's a wealthy Denver housewife with four children. After her mother dies, she returns to her parents' Virginia horsefarm to aid her senile father. Upon losing a toss with another owner, she wins the rights to the stable's least-valuable foal, the offspring of a stallion with speed but no stamina. Except in some way, Penny knows this massive, tenacious colt can turn into history's greatest racehorse. During the plodding exposition, the film jogs out a roll call of guest stars---James Cromwell, Dylan Baker Fred Thompson Jesus---to notify Penny of what she can and cannot do before she ignores them and prevails.
The script works hard to encumber her with some hardship to prevail over: The farm may have to be sold, leaving her with just her own manse back in Denver! She really misses her kids when she's out on the circuit! The country club doesn't allow women! Nevertheless the outcome's predetermined anyway, so what's the difference? The key to making that difference would've been focusing either on the horse or the human who had the closest relationship with the horse, not the human who wanted to make money off the horse.
Malkovich's presence single-handedly can make you find appeal in something otherwise unexciting. Then again, why don't we get to see his ordeal? This character's turned into a comic-relief second-banana. He's the trainer, though we seldom see that. There's one moment that illustrates him best, when we see he hoards the newspaper clippings from his defeats. Otherwise it's merely about looking at his loud wardrobe.
This is audaciously, obviously calculating fantasyland stuff, passing itself off as a "true story," when, in effect, it's what's called "fact-based." And that's not quite the same thing. Trouble can arise from the strength of such movies being taken at face value as fact. Secretariat disregards this inevitable verity. Yes, the characters—well, most of them—are drawn from real life, reinterpreted for highest effect. Yes, there certainly was a Secretariat who did these extraordinary things. But what's staged is not the special journey of those things, but a sugar-rich castle-in-the-sky of the American precedent as born-agains and traditionalists would like to envision, laden with slushy grandeur, washed spotless of social conflict or more than one ethnic culture.
In this film's world, self-sufficient, strong-minded women like Penny ensures that conforming to "lady-like" standards of behavior take precedence, liberal activism's a naive puppy period your kids experience until they discover the harsh realities of estate taxes, and all faultless Americans are unified in their worship of a miraculous object of vague optimistic abstractions like hope and fighting for this and that. The movie's portrayal of its late '60s, '70s era is a gilded utopia of all things, notwithstanding the truth that the year Secretariat evidently won was the year the Vietnam War ended and the Watergate hearings commenced. A movie so desperate for sources of drama in complete denial of the magnitude of drama in which it takes place?! You almost couldn't pick an era in 20th century America more overwhelmed by divide and broad-spectrum pandemonium. Busing desegregation, the Pentagon Papers, the Chicago Seven, the Weather Underground, Kent State, Stonewall. Regardless of finding ourselves in an infuriated, perilously divided culture, the film wants us to have faith that the real America has been here the whole time, and we can take it back. If we just believe in a nonexistent past?
Instead, the entire film's overflowing with Diane Lane giving campaign speeches, beginning with her voice-over quoting the Bible. It continues with lines like, "You never know how far you can go unless you run!" She believes in Secretariat. Why? Because. I'm not saying belief's a bad thing, but there's insufficient elucidation for her determination.
An extraordinarily successful racehorse has been Disney-fied for escapist distraction. It's when reality's substituted and in its place the writer of Pearl Harbor and that of Radio and The Nativity Story exceed the boundary, enter melodrama. The imperious, domineering soundtrack distracts, oversweetens rather than keeping us absorbed or authentically uplifted. As near as I can distinguish there was no considerable tension between her and rival horseman Pancho Martin, owner of Secretariat's foremost challenger. He's a sexist blowhard. There's no background, so it just comes off as a performance. It'd seem it was felt the movie needed a bad guy.
The other non-white speaking role's Eddie, a black thoroughbred groom who's a member of a much more dangerous movie stereotype. He dances, sings, loves Jesus and that mighty ole horse. He's immediately deferential to "Miss Penny," induces soul and gospel music into her bothered life. The movie wants us to "believe" something? I believe that Eddie should've been the human character at the center. He spends more actual time, makes more physical contact with Secretariat than anyone else, knows him most deeply. If there's an underdog in this film at all, it's absolutely him. And he should've been given a three-dimensional characterization.
Like her horse, Penny's lucked out in life's sweepstakes. She's a wealthy Denver housewife with four children. After her mother dies, she returns to her parents' Virginia horsefarm to aid her senile father. Upon losing a toss with another owner, she wins the rights to the stable's least-valuable foal, the offspring of a stallion with speed but no stamina. Except in some way, Penny knows this massive, tenacious colt can turn into history's greatest racehorse. During the plodding exposition, the film jogs out a roll call of guest stars---James Cromwell, Dylan Baker Fred Thompson Jesus---to notify Penny of what she can and cannot do before she ignores them and prevails.
The script works hard to encumber her with some hardship to prevail over: The farm may have to be sold, leaving her with just her own manse back in Denver! She really misses her kids when she's out on the circuit! The country club doesn't allow women! Nevertheless the outcome's predetermined anyway, so what's the difference? The key to making that difference would've been focusing either on the horse or the human who had the closest relationship with the horse, not the human who wanted to make money off the horse.
Malkovich's presence single-handedly can make you find appeal in something otherwise unexciting. Then again, why don't we get to see his ordeal? This character's turned into a comic-relief second-banana. He's the trainer, though we seldom see that. There's one moment that illustrates him best, when we see he hoards the newspaper clippings from his defeats. Otherwise it's merely about looking at his loud wardrobe.
This is audaciously, obviously calculating fantasyland stuff, passing itself off as a "true story," when, in effect, it's what's called "fact-based." And that's not quite the same thing. Trouble can arise from the strength of such movies being taken at face value as fact. Secretariat disregards this inevitable verity. Yes, the characters—well, most of them—are drawn from real life, reinterpreted for highest effect. Yes, there certainly was a Secretariat who did these extraordinary things. But what's staged is not the special journey of those things, but a sugar-rich castle-in-the-sky of the American precedent as born-agains and traditionalists would like to envision, laden with slushy grandeur, washed spotless of social conflict or more than one ethnic culture.
In this film's world, self-sufficient, strong-minded women like Penny ensures that conforming to "lady-like" standards of behavior take precedence, liberal activism's a naive puppy period your kids experience until they discover the harsh realities of estate taxes, and all faultless Americans are unified in their worship of a miraculous object of vague optimistic abstractions like hope and fighting for this and that. The movie's portrayal of its late '60s, '70s era is a gilded utopia of all things, notwithstanding the truth that the year Secretariat evidently won was the year the Vietnam War ended and the Watergate hearings commenced. A movie so desperate for sources of drama in complete denial of the magnitude of drama in which it takes place?! You almost couldn't pick an era in 20th century America more overwhelmed by divide and broad-spectrum pandemonium. Busing desegregation, the Pentagon Papers, the Chicago Seven, the Weather Underground, Kent State, Stonewall. Regardless of finding ourselves in an infuriated, perilously divided culture, the film wants us to have faith that the real America has been here the whole time, and we can take it back. If we just believe in a nonexistent past?