REVIEW: Secretariat Spreads the Gospel of One Audacious Horse

And damned if the horse doesn't eat. Wallace hits beat after predictable beat with the precision of a tennis pro hitting a ball against the wall, and there are certainly things in Secretariat that are either pure fabrication or simply folly: Pancho Martin (played by Nestor Serrano), the trainer of Secretariat's chief rival, Sham, is painted as a rude, clueless goon, though he wasn't that way in real life. The script gives Eddie Sweat a few too many unfortunate Magic Negro lines (although Ellis still navigates the material with class and grace). And Randall really lunges for the heartstrings in the moment when -- huzzah! -- the infant Big Red triumphantly stands on his spindly legs mere seconds after emerging from the birth canal.

Your tolerance for these highly moviefied moments will depend on your tolerance for movies. Secretariat is an entertainment shaped loosely around facts, and even though the world of movies is filled with such things, we still get hung up on the idea that, say, Marie Antoinette couldn't possibly have owned Converse sneakers. Of course, Secretariat is guilty of giving us a Disneyish version of late-'60s, early-'70s America, and to enjoy it on any level, you'll have to approach it accordingly. Hoping for a treatise on the frustration and hopelessness of the Watergate era? You won't find it here. Looking for a pointed statement about how wrong the Vietnam war was? Look elsewhere. (Although the movie does suggest that the proper, well-heeled Penny Chenery supported her teenage daughter's burgeoning liberal values, while her husband just writes the poor girl off as a "commie.")

What you do get with Secretariat is a picture that, unlike its bland predecessor Seabiscuit, actually captures some of the thrill of racing. Wallace and cinematographer Dean Semler film each race of the Triple Crown distinctively and cleverly: We see the Preakness Stakes -- the second of the Triple Crown races -- on television, as viewed by Chenery's family at home, a way of connecting the bit of real life with the way most people experienced it. Wallace fixates on some wonderful details: The way, for instance, Thorwarth's Turcotte grasps Big Red's mane along with the reins, a tactile gesture that says not "I'm riding you" but "I'm with you."

At its best Secretariat suggests the mysterious outline of an unknowable creature without trying to draw it outright. Secretariat won the final race of the Triple Crown, the Belmont Stakes (on a track that's a mile and a half long, the longest dirt track in thoroughbred racing), by an astonishing 31 lengths, and to see him sail across the finish line -- either in the movie's re-creation of the event, or by watching the actual race via YouTube -- is to see a wondrous animal athlete having left his peers far behind. He's alone in his greatness, and from his body language there's every indication that he likes it that way.

Beyond that, Secretariat doesn't pretend to know the mind of its subject -- it's beyond human explanation, end of story. But I'm still trying to divine what message, exactly, Disney thought it might be hand-feeding to those religious groups: "Be lucky enough to have been born into a family of horse breeders and then win an 'undesirable' horse in a coin toss?" I think that one's a tough sell. How about "With determination, good genes, and the four legs God gave you, you can do anything!"? That is an aggressively religious message, but unfortunately, it doesn't apply to those of God's creatures who are actually able to buy tickets. Maybe the message of Secretariat is simply "Believe in greatness," which I agree can be twisted to fit any number of nefarious political meanings, though I don't see evidence that Wallace (who's a Christian) or even Disney is aggressively doing that here. The pity is that some critics may be more likely to react to the unrealized danger of the so-called message than they are to the actual movie in front of them.

At the risk of sharing what, in the Internet Age, we euphemistically call TMI, I will tell you -- if you haven't guessed already -- that I'm a left-leaning agnostic, and the closest I can ever get to believing in the existence of God is in the presence of animals. (I find human beings to be highly flawed inventions, but maybe that's just me.) In those opening minutes of Secretariat, I blanched at the Bible-quoting voice-over. But I quickly realized I needed to trust the horse, not the words superimposed on his image, and Wallace -- for all his missteps and aggressive calculations -- allows space for that trust to flourish. The biggest sin Wallace has committed is that of making a feel-good story about a truly amazing horse. For those looking to, or through, Secretariat for a deeper, more sinister meaning, all I can say is, there are worse places to look for God than in the nostril of a great horse.

Pages: 1 2