The Horse Boy

Posted by Jennine Lanouette on Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

Last weekend, I went to see two documentaries – Capitalism: A Love Story and The Horse Boy. In overall documentary terms, I would say Capitalism: A Love Story is the superior film, even though it put me in a bad mood. Not easy to face the sub-prime mortgage scandal portrayed as legitimized loan sharking. But I love that Michael Moore is still out there in wide release exposing out-of-the-mainstream truths. Talk about capitalizing, nothing like using years of success and popularity to keep hammering out the otherwise unseen contradictions and injustices that tarnish our American ideals.

Nonetheless, The Horse Boy is the film I would urge everyone to run out and see. In fact, it makes a great counter balance to the cold, hard truths of Capitalism: A Love Story in that it is truly a love story between a father and his four-year-old autistic son. After witnessing so much zealous over-application of an uncaring profit motive, and the human devastation that results from it, it is astonishing to see the amount of selfless time, effort and energy this man is willing to devote to one tiny, fragile, barely formed human being. It restores one’s faith in the power of love. And its all true.

Having struggled to remediate the autism for most of his son’s short life, exhausting every treatment known on earth, Rupert Isaacson decides to shoot for the moon with shamanic healing. He learns that the most powerful shamans are in the far reaches of Mongolia, so he and his wife pack up their son and set off (with a film crew in tow, of course, much to the benefit of the rest of us).

They fly to a far-flung city and then take off with a guide in a van. They meet their first group of shamans and see some preliminary results. Then they trek across the Mongolian expanse to the foot of some mountains and give up their van for horses. They ride up and up and up searching for the reindeer people who are reputed to have among them the most powerful shaman known. They find him and he performs some rituals on the boy. Then they trek all the way back. Soon they begin to notice that the boy is substantially changed.

After the harsh economics lesson of Michael Moore’s film this one felt like sinking into a comforting embrace. Real people who are nonetheless compelling characters, transporting landscapes despite low resolution technology and a life-compromising problem desperate to be addressed made it refreshingly unchallenging. Not to mention it had a happy ending.

I knew going in, because I had read a review, that the film would end with most of the boy’s autistic symptoms either significantly reduced or eliminated. I also knew that, in story terms, it had to have that ending. If there had been no substantial change in the boy after the visit to the shaman, the filmmakers wouldn’t have had a film. They would have lugged all that camera equipment to Outer Mongolia for nothing.

A third thing I knew was that if this were a narrative film, such a magical ending would be considered a contrivance of divine intervention and therefore not dramatically legitimate. “Give me a break! That would never happen!” It would be akin to a fairy tale. So I wondered, knowing rationally that the film has to end happily, why do I still feel enough tension to be engaged in it along the way? Furthermore, given that the ending falls outside accepted western reality, why do I accept this incredible result as true?

My first thought was that it’s kind of like seeing a magic trick. Even though you’ve been told how its going to come out, you still want to see it so you can believe it. The idea that a shaman could, in a few waves of his hand, bring about such dramatic change in a syndrome that has vexed western efforts for years considerably stretches credibility, to say the least. So the journey we are on with the film is not only one of trekking across Mongolia but also a slow progression towards a true suspension of disbelief.

One answer to why we would believe it is the “miracle” of technology. We can see it with our own eyes on digital video. But in this case objective documentary reportage by itself would not be enough to convince. To believe this one we’re going to have to see the human story.

So we have a main character, Rupert, and his wife, Kristin, who are both rational westerners just like us. They are mainstream professionals who are also capable of adventure and open to other cultures. They become sympathetic characters for us because life has thrown them a curve ball with the sudden devolution of their young son into autism. Then we see how, in his desperation to help his son, Rupert draws upon his past experience to come up with a wild idea.

Any one of us witnessing the severity of Rupert and Kristin’s plight can imagine that if we were in such a helpless position with a relentlessly suffering child we would be just as willing to go to outlandish extremes. Thus, we accept this journey as being reasonable in its own context and become engaged in its perilousness, which has more to do with its potential for crushing disappointment than any physical risk.

So we set off with them on their journey, the “journey” being a time-honored metaphor for growth and change. I think this may be the most comforting and captivating aspect of this film, the fact that it is a journey. If Rupert had found a powerful shaman down the street from him and called up to make an appointment, we would have a very different response to the story. An essential part of our ability to accept this fantastic new reality is seeing that Rupert and Kristin, and therefore us along with them, had to work so hard to get it.

And, as with any journey, there are stages along the way. This makes the journey not simply a practical expedition towards a material goal, but a progression in our understanding and perception of what we are experiencing. In this case, the final “miracle” with the master shaman is not the first time we’ve seen something unworldly happen.

Even before Rupert and Kristin take off on their trip, we see a change come over the boy when he is put on a horse and his screaming, flailing, disengaged symptoms suddenly recede. He calms down and starts chatting with his father. What explains that? There is some kind of effect that the horse has on the boy that can’t be scientifically quantified, giving us our first suggestion that the rationally unexplainable can occur.

Then, soon after they arrive in Mongolia, they meet their first group of shamans and go through a series of rituals with them. Later, they see some changes in the boy, including, to their astonishment, his engagement in play with the six-year-old son of their guide. This makes the second unexplainable moment, one that is just a few degrees more significant than the first. The ultimate encounter with the powerful shaman then becomes number three, and the shift in our perception is completed.

The number three is very important. When something happens once, it is an isolated incident and can be easily forgotten or dismissed. Indeed, left alone, the connection the boy makes with the horse would remain little more than a curiosity. When something happens a second time, it is no longer isolated but it can, nonetheless, still be written off as a fluke. Seeing the boy play with another boy after the group rituals could, after all, be a coincidence. But when something happens a third time, then a pattern has been established. The three events together can’t be so easily dismissed. That’s when we have to finally sit up and pay attention.

So a big part of how we can accept as real the positive results of the final shaman’s mystical work is that the legitimacy of it is supported by the two previous unexplainable events. I read on the film’s website that they actually had another encounter with shaman’s in Africa some time before and it was the results of that event that sparked Rupert’s idea to go on this trip. But they left that out of the film. Why? Because four mystical events would have been too much. It only takes three to show the pattern. One more and, “Alright already! We get it! The magic works!”

In the end, Rupert and Kristin come back to their home in Texas and start a school for autistic children, using their good fortune to help other struggling parents and giving their story not only a happy ending for them individually but also some benefit for the common good.

Ultimately, the beauty of this film is that it is both real, like an objective documentary, and metaphoric, like a fairy tale, all at the same time. And, as with any fairy tale, we want it to be true.

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You can watch The Horse Boy on the following Video On Demand websites:

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