Canter Bridge

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The matching white casts worn by spunky Seabiscuit and anger-in-motion jockey Red Pollard (Toby Maguire) near the end of this beautiful movie remind us that the story it tells is not about a horse. Nor is it, as some have alleged, just about the people with the horse standing in as equine eye candy.

It’s about both. Two white casts. Two stories of healing from the pits of disposability, anger, hopelessness. ‘We all get a little banged around’, Jeff Bridges’ elegantly acted character tells us.

Seabiscuit is a feast for the eyes, for the ears, and for the heart.

An historian who writes like David McCullough should not be allowed to have a voice like that. It’s not fair. And it’s the first human sound you hear in this superbly crafted movie. It lends a true-to-life frame to the move, one that the soundtrack leads you to intermittently, so that you don’t forget: something like this really happened, and not that long ago. The Great Depression was a defining moment for this country – ignoring for just one moment the rest of this interconnected world – and it lives on as the wolf at the door for those who know those who knew what it meant in shattered lives and down-the-drain assumptions about hard work and its expected fruits.

A little horse with an attitude came along just at the right moment to show people stuck in life’s mosh pits that there might be more to the story. It’s about the future, Jeff Bridges’ ‘Mr Howard’ tells us, seeming quite naïve at times, except for the now obvious fact that he was right.

The story has its poetry and its music. Randy Newman manages a score that is at once sonorous and understated, perfectly complementing the horse and its people without once intruding on the foreground, where it does not belong.

The casting is superb: Bridges’ upside-down thoughtful scowl is humanized by the light in his eyes. He carries his pain around in a heart that can still respond. He also bears his privilege lightly, becoming the target of a greater number of metaphorical slaps on the butt from common people without seeming to mind, or even to notice.

That’s the poetry, someone says, as he watches the Biscuit run. But it’s on the human side of the rail too, in this sympathetic film.

Tobey Maguire as the too-tall jockey. Red Pollard distinguishes himself in a serious film, and Cooper’s character is magic. When Cooper’s Tom Smith talks to a horse and Newman’s score gently merges sound with sight, you realize you’re in the hands of craftsmen who are unlikely to disappoint. And they don’t, pulling this story off in a way that justifies the accolades it received.

Elizabeth Banks’ Marcela. Aah. Are there actually women this beautiful at thirty, or is that just lights and mirrors? A check of her filmography shows that the toothy girl-next-door unselfconsciousness of her persona is real, natural, and perhaps ever so slightly lamented as a determiner of the kinds of roles that come her way. No matter, Lizzy. Just keep doing what you do.

Arguably, the best wide scene in the movie occurs at Santa Anita Park, I believe, when the camera catches the infield crowd running for angle, a scene you can only truly appreciate if you’ve experienced public pandemonium and the momentary glimpse of chaos that it offers.

What a movie. It’s suitable for families, since the hearts is swells can be of any age.