IN a celebrity-centric media culture obsessed with the Kardashian sisters' line of handbags and the arrival of Beyonce and Jay-Z's curiously named newborn, it's delightful to discover a doco interested in championing the everyday man and woman.
Meet Buck Brannaman: the absorbing subject of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award-winning and potentially Oscar-contending doco Buck, and the inspiration for Robert Redford's 1998 drama The Horse Whisperer, for which he stood in as adviser.
This all-American cowboy's story makes for fascinating fodder, opening up to director Cindy Meehl about an abused childhood that, he believes, brought out the empathy for, and rapport with, horses for which he has became famous.
For nine months of the year, Buck criss-crosses the country (sometimes with wife and daughters, mostly without) - from Maine to Michigan - teaching four-day clinics based on a style of humane horsemanship he learnt from his mentor Ray Hunt.
A gifted yarn-spinner, he tells how he became a professional trick roper aged six and a “childhood celebrity”, featuring as a Kellogg's sugar-pop kid in TV commercials.
But behind the apparent cheerful front was a tortured soul, with Buck regularly suffering physical abuse at the hands of his demanding and often drunken father.
Watching Buck's rugged long-time friend shed a tear as he recalls seeing the scars on his childhood mate's back provides a poignant moment in this beautifully inspiring and incredibly engaging film about a man who endured so much hurt, but managed to channel it into so much compassion.
BUCK (PG)
Directed by: Cindy Meehl
Starring: Buck Brannaman
Screening: Somerville, UWA, from January 23-25 & 27-29 at 8pm; and Joondalup Pines, from January 31-February 5 as part of PIAF's Lotterywest Festival Films
Rating: Four-and-a-half stars
Reviewed by: Emilia Vranjes