The Horse and His Boy

This Saturday's post is purely fabricated from the moments of serendipity that exist inside my head. Yesterday's post concerned the moments with a horse and the image of freedom. As fortune would have it, the notion spilled over into another world. Just as I sat, channel hopping after the IPL game, I paused on a sky arts programme on El Greco. The man, sometime rich and sometime poor, all caught in a brush stroke with those long fingers. The following programme was flagged as a French art film called White Mane. Given the theme of Friday’s post, I could not resist.

The film was set in the Camargue, high contrast in black and white: "Crin Blanc" white mane, "Cheval Sauvage" wild horse. The white horses of the Camargue are famous, however when I visited the region no horses did I see. There were however cattle, bulls trained for the bullfight and thousands of flamingo, in flames across the great marsh of the Rhone delta.

The isolated walled city of Aigues Mortes, once a port from whence a crusade once embarked is now inland, its walls rising from the marsh: a magnificent landmark. Aigues Mortes, dead waters in Languedoc, the Occitan language. The nearest port now is Saintes Marie's De-La-Mer, the main city of the Camargue. It is a pilgrimage place for the Roma and they create a procession into the sea to commemorate Sara, the patron saint of the gypsies. It is certainly a place to watch your handbag. There is a hint of Spain with guitar playing gypsies on each corner. I remember it vividly.

Yet, as ever, I digress; what of this exquisite short film of Cheval Sauvage and the fisher boy. The peasant boy claims the horse from the herdsmen because they cannot tame this fiery white stallion. The French wranglers, though defeated, harry the pair to claim possession with cruel intent. The images are poignant and haunting with washed out and bleached landscapes. In the end the boy and horse are pursued, across the lagoons, the sands and the marsh. Eventually they launch themselves into the river to escape. Finally the horse and boy join the white horses rolling in from the sea and reach the place where the boy and his horse can be forever friends.

The ultimate freedom is gained as they sink beneath the waves.

JL April 21 12:13