An intensely personal yet epic spiritual journey, The Horse Boy follows one Texas couple and their autistic son as they trek on horseback through Outer Mongolia in an attempt to find healing for him. When two-year-old Rowan was diagnosed with autism, Rupert Isaacson, a writer and former horse trainer, and his wife Kristin Neff, a psychology professor, sought the best possible medical care, but traditional therapies had little effect. Then they discovered that Rowan has a profoun Read more…
March 18th, 2010 on 9:27 pm
This review is from: The Horse Boy (DVD)
I saw a screening of “Horse Boy” in Memphis in November 09. I had read the book and loved it. The author, Rupert Isaacson had been flown in for this event to announce the founding of a non-profit to bring horses and special needs kids (some autistic) together. The film was made while Isaacson and his wife took their autistic 6-year old son to Mongolia for, hopefully, some kind of healing for the boy. During this audacious trip, their guide arranged for nine shamans to meet the family in the open. One by one, they assess the boy and his family and perform their brand of healing on them. Interestingly, they confer among themselves and decide that a mentally unbalanced departed relative on the mother’s side was tugging at the boy. A ritual had to be performed to rid them of her spirit. Fascinating conclusion. Other rituals were performed on the parents as well as the boy, and sure enough, for the first time, the boy began to play with another lad near his age, a Mongolian boy. Consequently, this other child was invited to come along on the journey, as he was the son of their guide. They proceeded in a van, then on horseback to a higher elevation much farther north into reindeer country to meet a grand shaman they’d been told about. That part of the book AND the film is quite remarkable. The parents never knew if the boy would tolerate two days on horseback, as he was prone to several tantrums per day. I highly recommend this film (and the book) to readers who want to know how far loving parents will go to help their child. Also who like to learn how healing takes place in remote places where people live by understanding the human body and emotions better than we so-called civilized folks do.
March 19th, 2010 on 1:40 am
This review is from: The Horse Boy [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.4 Import - Australia ] (DVD)
It is a nice movie of desperate attempts to heal an autistic son, leading a young family to Mongolian shamans. An explicit doco of a mental health condition provides a rare data of a country heard seldom of.