Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 19-June-05
Spoiler Rating: Medium

The Electric Horseman (1979)

Western legend has given America a lot of things — a sacred wanderlust, a native consciousness, an excuse for cheesy clothing, home decor, and aftershave — but most of all it has provided a reference point against which all other eras are contrasted. The Old West was our rough-and-ready Garden of Eden, a place of elemental humanity from which we broke out into the slick, sprawling, oh-so-self-conscious nation we are today. I suppose that's why storytellers often evoke cowboys and purple mountains and such when speaking of men returning to their basic principles. Do that, and the story is universal. Do that, and the message hits home.

"The Electric Horseman" is a fine example of the Western backdrop being used to elevate a simple yarn to epic grandeur. It relates the unusual adventures of Sonny Steele (Robert Redford), a rodeo star who left the circuit to become product spokesman for a megacorporation named Ampco. The opening montage traces his road from five-time all-around world champion to the Ranch Breakfast Cowboy, and by the time the movie fully commences he has declined into a drunken joke in illuminated purple chaps. The first 35 minutes (which director Sydney Pollack might have trimmed) find Sonny hitting rock bottom at a trade show in Vegas where he's asked to share the stage with Ampco's famous thoroughbred, Rising Star. Sensing a kinship with the horse in their mutual bondage, Sonny decides on the spur of the moment to ride away from all the madness, disappearing into the hills before anyone realizes what's happened.

The rest of the picture follows Sonny and Rising Star as they make their way into Utah with Ampco, the law, and the eyes of America hard on their hooves. The public is involved thanks to the investigative savvy of a TV reporter (Jane Fonda) who tracks down the outlaws and captures Sonny's rustic integrity on tape. Romance inevitably blooms under the wide-open sky, but it's reined in and never overwhelms the story. Indeed, Fonda's significance is not as a love interest but as a lens. She's the means by which the average viewer (who has sold out to the marketing machine whether they know it or not) can absorb the import of Sonny's unsophisticated rebellion. As she watches with skepticism, then amazement, then admiration, she travels back to an age when men understood the natural world and acted in accordance with it, bullshit-free. Her wonder and awakening are ours (and her lust too, if you're a Redford fan).

Although one could question Sonny's method of delivering Rising Star from unnatural servitude, "The Electric Horseman" convincingly portrays him as an American hero in the best of the Western mold. His message, now 26 years old but essentially eternal, will always resonate in this gentle, enjoyable film.

Copyright © 2005 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.