'Dream Horse': An Inspirational Film
The film begins with Jan Vokes (Toni Collette) in a typical “wake-up” scene. As the film proceeds, it's easy to say she doesn’t have any meaning in her life. During the day, she works at a grocer; at night she waits tables at a local pub. This is all to take care of her retired parents, making sure that they aren’t living in squalor.
While working at the pub, she overhears a customer, Howard Davies (Damian Lewis) talking about racehorses. She soon finds out that he was a mess in the past; he almost lost his home, wife, and kids to gambling when a bet didn’t work out. With Jan being experienced in breeding prize winners, she was set to breed a racehorse. There’s a classic montage of her researching, budgeting, and looking for the perfect horses to breed. Jan finds a retired race mare, Rewbell, and wanted her husband, former farmhand Brian “Daisy” Vokes (Owen Teale), to buy it for her.
With the crazy plan that Jan had, she found a retired stallion racehorse, Bien Bien, to mate with Rewbell. After a successful pregnancy, Jan recruited Howard, a couple of barflies, and locals to pitch in with the horse on the way. Sadly, Rewbell didn’t survive childbirth. As the foal grows, he starts to become a family member for Jan and Daisy. Finally, it was time to give the newborn a name: they gathered the team and named the horse “Dream Alliance,” or “Dream,” for short. When Dream approached adolescence, Jan decided that it was time for him to start training for races.
Jan and Daisy take Dream to Philip Hobbs (Nicholas Ferrell), one of the top racehorse trainers in the country. When they got there, Hobbs was almost offended for taking his “precious” time. But Hobbs gave them the opportunity to see what Dream had. Dream seemed to be impetuous while the horse trainer was trying to ride him. All of a sudden, Dream took off, impressing Hobbs; and so he decided to train him. With the training that Hobbs did, Dream places third in his first race. Afterward, he kept placing higher and higher at each meet. Dream is a symbol of hope for the town and the audience.
Jan is a symbolic main character: being a high school student, I have definitely felt that I didn't have any meaning in my life. By seeing her struggle, it gave me a little bit of hope when she strived for something that made her happy again: she did something to make herself feel satisfied, which is something that we all need and deserve.
Watching this film was a roller coaster of emotions. I was pleasantly surprised when even the audience would applaud as if they were at each meeting the cast. The director, Euros Lyn, did a great job of getting the audience to be hooked on the film. When the credits were done, the audience got a chance for a Q&A with the director himself.
One audience member asked Lyn: “What is the secret to making a great movie?” His response: “[The] secret about making a great movie is understanding how the hero feels”, as well as trying to be faithful with the film and the people. Many know that the Sundance premiere of Dark Horse in 2015 was the documentary of Dream, the real-life Jan, and the gang. Lyn added: “[The] documentary was left [in the past] and [we] went back to the people,” meaning that he didn’t want to base it on what the documentary said or did, but instead went back to Jan and Daisy. Lyn mentioned that the writer (Neil McKay) spent a lot of time with them and got to know how everything happened first hand. This was my first Sundance film, and I was very impressed by the quality of the film. Dream Horse is just one of those movies to watch when you're having a hard day: ten out of ten.
