Modern Theme Robert Redford Intends ‘Horse Whisperer’ To Tell Of The Impending Loss Of The Real West

Robert Redford knew he wanted to make “The Horse Whisperer” even before he knew how the story would end. And then when he found out the ending, he changed it anyway.

Three years ago, Redford and Disney were engaged in a heated bidding war with Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. for the movie rights to Nicholas Evans’ then-unfinished novel about a Montana cowboy who has a mysterious, soothing way with horses and city folk. Disney eventually won on the strength of a $3 million bid and, perhaps more importantly, Redford’s reputation as an actor, activist and filmmaker.

“There’s a kind of integrity that runs through all his films,” says Evans, who turned down higher offers so Redford would make the movie. “There’s a spiritual aspect to the book, which he clearly saw.”

What Redford didn’t see at the time was an ending. Evans was only halfway through the book when it sold and, frankly, had no idea as to how he was going to end the novel. Evans’ uncertainty wasn’t really important to Redford, though. The role of the aging cowboy seemed a natural for him as an actor. And the book’s setting - the vanishing West - seemed tailor-made for Redford’s directorial sensibilities.

“Those elements were enough for me,” the 60-year-old Redford says. “Unless they decided to go to another planet at the end, the book worked.”

And by the time Disney secured the rights to “The Horse Whisperer,” Redford already had a few ideas of his own about how the story should end. Not surprisingly, his impressions didn’t really coincide with those of Evans, whose sentimental novel about a controlling mother and adolescent daughter who enlist a rugged Montana cowboy to heal their emotionally damaged horse was derided by many as “The Broncos of Madison County.”

So Redford wrote his own ending, making the story tougher and much less melodramatic.

Redford saw the film as a logical extension of many of the themes he had explored in movies like “Ordinary People,” “The Milagro Beanfield War” and “A River Runs Through It.”

“The book has so many elements that I thought I could mine,” Redford says. “It has a mythological proportion, having to do with primal things like mother-daughter relationships. There are journeys from darkness to light, unconsciousness to consciousness, east to west.

“It had the physicality of a part of the country that I love and know pretty well, as well as New York, which I know pretty well, too.”

Indeed, Redford contrasts the two regions in ways both subtle and plain throughout the film. Visually, the scenes in New York are closed and compressed, reflecting the hectic lives of the Maclean family.

Once the action moves west, Redford literally opens the film up, expanding the screen’s frame from a narrow 1.85 to the wider 2.35 ratio.

Redford uses sound, too, filling the New York scenes with fax machines, phones, sirens and beepers to contrast with the sounds of nature and ranch life in Montana.

“I wanted to show how technology has overtaken us today, particularly as it relates to families,” Redford says. “Families, like a lot of things, are in a state of transition right now.

“There’s this metamorphosis going on, having to do with things that are coming at us like the Internet and biotechnology. There are all kinds of threats out there that appear to be pluses at the moment, but I think they’re about to step into the darker sides of themselves. There’s a loss of privacy and a manipulation by various elements that maybe shouldn’t be there.

“My character’s family in the movie and the way they live on the ranch, with family prayer and the kind of closeness they have with each other … that kind of closeness has been assaulted by technology and urbanization and information,” Redford continues.

“It’s changing the character of families, so that a family that was common when I was a kid is now almost anachronistic. I don’t know where it’s going to go, and I don’t think anyone else does either.’ In a way then, “The Horse Whisperer” stands as Redford’s homage to what he calls “the real West,” where people live close to nature and make their livelihood from the land, where families work together and eat meals together, where people don’t talk about much, so naturally, they don’t complain about much either, because, as Redford puts it, “There’s not a therapist standing in the corral.” It’s a place where people make the best of an often harsh environment and, although sometimes they get kicked around pretty good, they always find a way to make it work.

“A lot of movies have romanticized the West by oversimplifying people or making them larger than life, almost cartoon heroes, and that didn’t interest me,” Redford says. “The real West is romantic and powerful and dramatic enough just as it is.

“So my idea was to show how it is and, in doing so, I’d be presenting the audience with a view of something that was about to go away. And there would be an overriding sadness to it.”