A Great Film

Rating: 10/10 (28 July 2003)

This is the best film I've seen in 2003, and it's set a very high standard for others in the Oscar competition.
The racing scenes were the best ever filmed. That's not saying much, since there haven't been very many movies about horse racing (Phar Lap and Let It Ride come to mind). But the director made us feel as if we were in the midst of the race, watching jockeys hurl insults at each other and then guide their mounts around the field.
The movie starts slowly, braiding three separate threads -- the lives of the main characters -- into one string; woven into the string is the narration. Eventually, the three threads are inextricably woven together into one, and woven around the horse that brings them together.
The main character represent far more than the lives they portray. Charles Howard is the epitome of optimism, never losing his hope for the future. And he is singularly serendipitous, finding value in unnoticed things: first automobiles, then Tom Smith. Tom Smith is the individualist, the loner, the go-it-your-own-way outcast; he is uncomfortable among humans, almost resentful of their intrusion into his wide-open West, and you can see his discomfort in his face in every scene. Red Pollard is the out-of-place fighter; he struggles for acceptance, for respect, and he never stops fighting even when badly outmatched. He is beaten again and again, and still comes back with a stronger resolve each time. The three men together represent America itself, and their coming together with Seabiscuit as their catalyst represents the beginning of the nation's emergence from the Great Depression, the beginning of hope.
The match race between Seabiscuit and War Admiral is more than a race between two horses, it is a quest for legitimacy. And it seeks legitimacy not just for Seabiscuit (whose owners want him recognized as the great horse that he is), not just for West Coast racing, but for the West Coast of American society, for this is the age when the West grows up and takes its rightful place.
Some movies are merely about sports. Some movies, such as Chariots of Fire and Seabiscuit, transcend their settings and come to mean more than any sport. Seabiscuit is not just about a great racehorse and the lives he touched, it is about the indomitable American spirit, defeat and triumph, failure and redemption.
10 out of 10.