All the Pretty Horses (2000), Movie Review Example

According to Scott (2000) All the Pretty Horses talks about life, and how people take challenges, it comes down to one decision which is to stick to something or quit. The story revolves around a romance between a cowboy, John Grady Cole, and a Mexican landowner’s daughter. There was an ongoing theme between horses, love, friendship and violence. I reflects that of old-fashioned western movies (Scott).

I found the opening scene of the movie interesting, it was just a simple medium shot of horses running across the desert with harsh bright light coming from the bottom left of the page, this was shot at night, and everything else in the background looked like black abyss. The camera stood still and the shot was dusty or smoky, it had a nice effect on how the white light reflected on the smoke, giving it this surreal effect of vagueness. This shot almost seemed like a dream.

This quickly faded out to a shot of a half-full moon, the moon seemed cold and there was a tint of blue in the lighting, it made it feel eerie as black clouds would pass over it, yet its luminance shone through. Together with the shot of the moon was a dialogue between Cole and his best-friend. The two were speaking of death.

As the camera shifted towards the two, it showed them lying on the desert ground, using rocks as pillows. This showed a medium shot of the two, like the previous two shots, it was still. The shot size was medium, and the actors were not moving. Both were in a straight position, with their bodies still, neither looking at each other. Their gaze was fixed up on the moon, and their town of voice was almost a whisper.

The characters were adorn in dark colors, mostly black. This made them fade into the dark background. The lighting was dim, and there was little light in the shot. This light was coming from the lower left side of the camera, and only focusing on the faces of the actors.

This scene was brief, and was followed by a montage of desert landscapes. This time, the camera was moving and the shots were long range, and were very quick. They faded over each other, and there were some very tight shots of a horse, which would show only a certain part at a time, in the end of the scene, focusing more on the horse’s eye.

I think the significance of the horses at the start represented a dream, it was very brief and the smoke implied that things were not clear. The light may have represented death: “walking towards the light” and the horses seemed to be coming out of this light.

As the scene faded into the moon, the two men were talking about death, asking mostly questions. I think that there was significance in the moon being only half-full with this, that they were not certain about a lot of things in life, and they were lost. The blue tint represents a level of serenity. That, even though they were not sure, they were still at peace with something.

The interesting part when the camera focused on the two friends was how they were positioned. They seemed to be laid down as if they were corpses in a coffin. This was very symbolic of their conversation about death. Their hands were even folded on their stomachs, like that of a corpse. Their gaze was fixed on the moon, and it seemed like they were in a dream sort of phase. After this came the montage of desert shots. I think the choice in these shots were also in connection to death, since deserts are known as dry, arid and “dead” land.

Works Cited

Scott, A.O. “All the Pretty Horses (2000).” The New York Times. The New York Times Company, 25 Dec 2000. Web. 12 Oct 2010.             <http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=940CE4D71538F936A15751C1A9669C8B63>.