Its was an ideal sunday feel good morning today.I sat down to watch TV witha cup of hot coffee(my kind of an idyllic morning).Saw that SPIRIT - The stallionof Cimmaron was airing on Star movies.Must have been quite some time since itstarted.I had already seen it and had liked it.So just continued with it today too.
Spirit is the story of a horse , about its seizure by humans and how it sees the good and bad of them and how it goes on to return to its home landand in the process frees a lot more like him.Its a movie which makes its point veryclear never deviating from the theme of how a desire for freedom makes one do anything asdaring as it can be.It speaks about the strength of will,which it goes on to show,is notjust a characetristic of humans but can also show itself in any form of life,a horse inthis case.The persistent fight of Spirit for his freedom starts with him being capturedby an army of soldiers.Its here that a proud officer tries to show his authority by challengingto tame Spirit who initially initimidated by the presence of so many armed humans loses morale,but at the precise moment when the officer speaks in a way as to humiliate the horse it just pullsup himself and accrues all its strength and courage to shove off the officer.This act of his givesenormous encouragement to the other horses around.Not stopping at this,Spirit breaks thefence and leads all other horses out of the stable to freedom.In this act of his helps himan Indian boy who himself was captured by the army.Just a few moments after his entry intothe free land Spirit stops to bid farewell to the Indian boy only to realise that he iscaptured by the boy.Alas!Happiness is so short lived.Its in the Indian village that Spirit meets his mare love who unlike him doesn't mind being owned by a human and much to his suprise is very much fond of her human master.All the time he spends here he still is determined notto allow the Indian master to ride him which means forgoing his freedom.And one day when finally he is given freedom he comes back only to save this Indian from being killed by the same old army officer.Its in this scesn that the mare gets shot and to add on to Sprit's grief he is again captured by the officer.This time Spirit is not able stand up to the other captured horses in thestable who identify their old hero.He simply goes on to obey the humans.But when he realise that they are headed to his homeland ,which he never wants them to reach,he comes into action again.Its here that he uses his strength and smartness to free the whole group of horses again and destroys the entire army camp.In his run when he is stuck in fire,the old Indian master comes to his rescue who always had been follwoing Spirit since he saved his life.In the process of escape,Spirit takes a gaint leap across cliff.This act of his goes to show that a hero never hesitates to risk his life when higher things like freedom are at stake.This persistence and attitude of his moves the officer who decides to let him go and bows his head down to Spirit.
The directors tell the story in a convincing way never letting us feel that the hero of the story is an animal.The narration by Matt Damon as Spirit himself never makes youwonder as to the possibility of a beast having the same emotions as human would.Adding to the good story and narration is the music score by Hans Zimmer,powered by Songs written and sung by BryanAdams.The sound track of this movie,like expected from any good OST, carries the emotion of thesituation and the protogonists and transfers it to you.One cannot just help feeling exhilirated whenSpirit at the end of the movie is running in the valleys with Bryan Admas' earnest voice in thebackground.As for the picturisation ,right from the features of the actors to the picturesque landscapes the aimation is amazing.Be it the fire sparks seen all around when Spirit is running in the forest fire or the snow flakes ,they all seem so natural.
With a beautiful,inspiring story told in the best way it can be, the movie captivatesteh viewers for some time even after watching it.And as for criticising the movie,I couldn't findany great defects , may be because of the absence of any human actors and the movie itself being a workof animation which makes everything happen in a movie and makes perfection possible.But thanks to the sensible direction nothing unrealistic happens in the movie leaving the viewer with the impression of having watched a true story.
