Beautiful Horse Boy a Transcendent Journey
Writer and former horse trainer Rupert Isaacson and his psychology professor wife Kristin Neff journey with their autistic son Rowan to the wilds of Mongolia in hopes of finding the boy some semblance of piece. Noticing how calm and at ease he appears to be around horses, the pair hope that by taking him deep into these wilds and bringing him in contact with the indigenous people’s long shamanic traditions they will find some sort of healing answer Western medical science so far has been unable to discover.
Rowan Isaacson in Zeitgeist Films' The Horse Boy
That’s the journey filmmaker Michel O. Scott (a former Hollywood production assistant who has a hand in, of all things, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning) takes audiences on in the documentary The Horse Boy. Narrated by Issacson, the film is part travelogue, part journey into the autistic mind and part story of a family doing their best to deal with an unimaginable crisis. It is that core bond between father, mother and son that drives the picture forward, and whether a person chooses to believe this journey has healed Rowan or not the strength of this family’s connection one to the other is positively indisputable.
I admit, going in I was fairly incredulous I was going to enjoy this one all that much. I’m not that big on alternative styles of medicine, and while I’m perfectly willing to believe that some people do find comfort in it I’m not going to claim to feeling anywhere near the same. A lot of time I find a lot of these ideas to be nothing more than outright hooey, a personal prejudice I know but one I am trying my best to work on.
The Horse Boy goes along way to helping that cause. The filmmakers never say Rowan is no longer autistic. They never say just by going on this journey he is now 100-percent healthy. All they claim is that by going to Mongolia, by meeting with the shamans, by becoming more at ease with the natural world around him, his unimaginable plight has been somewhat lessened. He has learned to be calm, discovered the joys of spending time with children his own age and playing with them in concert. Most of all, even for being so young (the film was shot in 2007 when Rowan wasn’t quite 6-years-old) I got the feeling that he’s discovered he has a future, no longer closing himself off from the life experiences surrounding him.
Is this because of the shamans? Would Rowan, under the continued loving care of his parents and guidance of medical professionals, come to be more in control of his autism and not vice-versa all the same? I honestly don’t know the answer to those questions, but I don’t think the child’s parents or the filmmakers do, either. What I will say is that this journey that they go, this almost unfathomable trek into a wilderness none of them fully understand, certainly felt transformative, and even without the input from the shamans I can’t help but think just the fact of going around the world and straight into nature’s heart would have had some sort of positive effect one way or the other.
Scott intermixes the family’s journey with interviews with noted specialists in the field. He also goes out of his way to show Isaacson and Neff wavering on whether or not going to Mongolia was the right thing to do, never shying away from Rowan’s more explosive outbursts showing how his condition tends to rule all of their lives. The film is almost even-handed to a fault, so obsessed with letting the images speak for themselves the doc almost distances itself too much from its subject matter.
That being said, The Horse Boy is an absolutely beautiful motion picture. It moved me right at my core and made me continually think of the world around us and how we treat it. Rowan’s saga hits home soaring to heights so many narrative features can only dream of achieving. As documentary rides into the unknown are concerned, this is one journey I’d saddle up for anytime.
Film Rating: êêê (out of 4)
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