The Silver Brumby

There's only so much you can do in a film in which horses are the main players but The Silver Brumby, based on the book of the same name by Elyne Mitchell, does it very well. thanks to some fine photography by Mark Gilfedder that makes full use of the beauty of Victoria's High Country and of the horses living freely amongst it. The film also has a clever narrative structure which switches levels between a child (Ami Daemion) whose mother (Caroline Goodall) is writing a story about a mythical wild stallion, and the story as they variously imagine it, the two strands eventually becoming one.

Russell Crowe is well cast as an independent young stockman intent on capturing an elusive brumby, their ongoing and largely wordless conflict which is the film's substance being allegorical of the grand conflict between Man and Nature and peppered with some observations by the mother that echo the oft-repeated, but never acted upon, insights of Aboriginal culture (compare, for instance, Storm Boy, 1976). Beautifully realized with ideas and emotions of substance, this is quality family film that not just horse lovers will appreciate.

 

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