#sxsw09

Over the Hills and Far Away (The Horse Boy) (Director: Michal Orion Scott): I was happy to see this film while in Austin for the South by Southwest Film Festival because the family it’s about live in the hill country just out­side of Austin, and my com­panion at the screening actu­ally worked as the father’s mas­seuse for a while. The film had also just won the Lone Star States award for the best Texas film that day and the crowd was buzzing in anticipation.

We’re intro­duced at the begin­ning of the film to Rupert Isaacson and Kristin Neff, a couple seem­ingly blessed by the gods of genetics, as they meet and fall in love while both are trav­eling through India. Then we learn that these two very attractive and intel­li­gent people have had a child and that some­thing is ter­ribly amiss. Rowan, at the tender age of two, is dia­gnosed with autism. It helps to explain, but does nothing to relieve the ter­rible tan­trums and dis­tant beha­viour his par­ents have endured. Lots of home movies com­mu­nicate very quickly the tedium that their lives have become, man­aging this beau­tiful but mys­ter­ious little boy. Then Rupert, a former horse-trainer, noticed some­thing. Rowan seemed to have a spe­cial bond with the horses on their farm, and while mounted on a horse, the tan­trums almost magic­ally dis­ap­peared. Magic, as it turns out, is central to this story. Rupert is also a human-rights worker and journ­alist who has studied indi­genous cul­tures in Africa and Asia, and he has a spe­cial interest in sham­anic healing. He puts the pieces together and decides to take his wife and son on a healing journey to Mongolia, home of the reclusive Reindeer People, the Dukha, who are renowned as the best sham­anic healers in a land of avid horsemen.

I should men­tion that by this point, Rowan had seen many tra­di­tional med­ical pro­fes­sionals and was on an onerous regime of med­ic­a­tions that didn’t seem to be helping all that much. Although Kristin, her­self a psy­cho­lo­gist, ini­tially res­isted the idea, even­tu­ally she decided to sup­port the trip, even if it only turned out to be an adven­ture for the family. Rupert is more con­fident than that, and enlists a film crew to doc­u­ment the whole thing. In the Q&A which fol­lowed the screening, dir­ector Michal Orion Scott said he couldn’t resist the idea, espe­cially because he thought the sham­anic healing prob­ably wouldn’t work.

The res­ulting film is an inter­esting com­bin­a­tion of stun­ning travelogue, family por­trait, and talking head doc about autism. The talking heads are a sore point for me, actu­ally. Esteemed autism experts from Temple Grandin (her­self aut­istic) to Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen weigh in on the con­di­tion, with various opin­ions. The only con­sensus seems to be that we don’t yet really under­stand all of autism’s dimen­sions. By con­trast, the Mongolian healers seem to treat young Rowan as if he’s demon-possessed. They speak of evil spirits, and sug­gest that a female rel­ative on Kristin’s side of the family is still tor­menting the boy. Perhaps the dir­ector is sig­naling his own uneas­i­ness with Rupert’s utter belief in the power of these shamans, but it ends up making the film feel a bit muddled.

I won’t spoil the ending of the film, but I will say that Rupert gambles just about everything on this trip. Not only is there a doc­u­mentary film, but he’s written a book (The Horse Boy) and started a found­a­tion and therapy centre for aut­istic chil­dren where they can work with horses (The Horse Boy Foundation).

Another of my issues with the film is the amount of pro­jec­tion going on. Especially con­sid­ering that Rowan’s mother is a psy­cho­lo­gist, I was amazed that the family seems to make huge leaps in logic when it con­cerns Rowan’s “bond” with animals, with the animals’ power to heal, and ulti­mately with the wisdom of indi­genous shamans. My reser­va­tions were some­what put to the side by the film’s end, but I still had lots of ques­tions. Unfortunately, they weren’t the sort of ques­tions I could ask in a fifteen-minute Q&A after the film.

Even with my slight reser­va­tions, this is a genu­inely moving film about a fas­cin­ating sub­ject. It also hap­pens to be set in a spec­tac­u­larly beau­tiful place. It will be screening at the upcoming Hot Docs film fest­ival here in Toronto, and I’m hopeful that I can get an inter­view with either the dir­ector, Michal Orion Scott, or Rowan’s dad Rupert Isaacson, should either of them make the trip.

Here is the Q&A with dir­ector Michal Orion Scott and Rowan’s par­ents, Rupert Isaacson and Kristin Neff, from after the screening (the first ques­tion is from a young aut­istic man who was attending the screening with his parents):

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Duration: 14:08

Official site of the film

(7/10)

Tagged as: #hotdocs09, #sxsw09, autism, parenting

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