MOVIE REVIEW
Horses (2010)
DCD Media
In 2004, Liz Mermin directed “The Beauty Academy of Kabul,” in which she followed a few fearless American hairdressers who decided to empower Afghan women through cosmetology. At one point, one of the students was asked about the future for women in her country now that the Taliban were not in charge. The student replied something along the lines that although she had a lovely husband herself, it was pointless to think that women would ever have equality with men since they would never allow it. The westerners fell into a stunned, depressed silence, and the eager-to-please student asked if she had said the wrong thing.
After that experience, it’s no surprise that Ms. Mermin has in her new film turned her back on people almost entirely. Filmed over a year at an Irish racing stable, “Horses” follows the fortunes of three horses belonging to a trainer named Paul Nolan, and explicitly identifies itself as a documentary where the animals are the stars. For obvious reasons, this doesn’t quite work.