horses are poetry.
Why not crocodiles,
stools or umbrellas?
Where are the bicycles?
Do you know
why grooms are so robust?
Because they drink the water
left by their horses.
That's better than penicillin.
It's so odd.
They compete.
One wins the races today.
Tomorrow they compete again.
Another wins.
Still another wins the day after.
Why don't they get together
and decide who's the best.
Once and for all.
Racing, racing!
But why? Do they know?
They do.
We outsiders don't.
Herein lies the relish
and meaning of life.
Mother!
"As I walked I heard horses
galloping on the easy track,
and the clatter of the horses' hooves.
Then suddenly, "He's fallen!" -
cried the boys sitting on the fence.
I climbed up a small stump
and saw the whole picture:
Gaily-clad jockeys galloping
toward the winning post
and behind them,
a horse without a rider.
And very close to me,
the jockey, dressed in yellow,
lay amid leafy birch-trees,
his arms spread
and his leg tucked under him.
People were running toward him.
The landau was rolling gently.
They lifted him..."
Wait a sec. What is it?
After a while we'll do a turn -
you and me.
Mother and daughter. Horses and dogs.
First time on the arena.
"Come and see!"
I'm fucking bored with this bullshit!
Are they real pictures?
I've showed the negatives.
It's a wild-life preserve.
What place is it?
A huge ravine.
That's a relict species.
It's hard to snap them.
Especially this specimen.
- You mean they run away?
- Yeah, and hide.
They came into existence
millennia ago.
Men went hunting
and women stayed in.
Where were these pictures taken?
In a wild-life preserve,
in a big ravine.
It's in the south,
on the Crimean seaside.
- Is it a girl?
- No, it's a boy.
Young boy.
Archeologists found
a relict skull,
and called it a sivocterium.
It has the brain ten times as heavy
as the human one.
And the skull is larger
than ours.
What do they eat?
Do you call this a race?
In olden times...
To stake or not -
there's no two ways about it.
Why do you stake
if you never win?
I stopped thinking about it.
The chain:
horse - trainer -jockey,
is very subtle and involved.
If a horse doesn't see a whip,
it doesn't feel the rider.
It only has twenty-five percent
of English blood.
A good twenty-five percent,
not only!
Last year it got a dislodged joint.
That was last year.
I like all kinds of horses -
thoroughbred or not.
Salaam, the son of Caucasus!
I'm so dull, have a poor memory
and can't figure things out.
Why is that?
With no conditions set, I propose
that you start working for me
on the 1st.
I collect rising stars.
Thanks, but I can't leave
the old man.
I'm not an old man!
I am sorry.
Who'd believe that Kasyanov
declined Amirov's invitation twice!
You're a sucker!
No, I'm not.
I've a right to marry
and be elected to government bodies.
Okay, get married! Get elected!
Stinker!
Can you stake your life on it?
- I'm no god.
- I know you aren't.
So you won't teach him a lesson?
I'm just wondering...
I'm just wondering
if you'd vouch for it.
Are you sure you can make
Amirov's colts
into Amirov's racers?
Okay, let Bairamov's Persten win.
I don't mind.
Bairamov's stallion is not in good
form. You know it.
I don't mean that.
Let anybody win,
but not Amirov.
What do you say? You decline?
Yes. What shall be will be.
Let the events take their own course.
His popularity is faked and inflated.
If a horse is agile
and good-natured,
and responsive to everything
that's going on,
and if it easily forgets
about good and bad things,
such a horse is sanguine.
If some sorrow or joy
dwells in the horse's heart
for a long time,
and so profoundly
that it's oblivious
of everything else...
it has a melancholic temperament.
May I do your hair?
Some people are shocked
when asked such questions.
The reactions of others
are beautiful.
By the way, in 1887,
the US Congress
adjourned its session
for the