My mind organizes its fondest memories in clickable thumbnail images that, if permitted, enlarge and multiply into sentient motion and I’m all the way back, in the scene, those four senses aroused, but it all starts with the thumbnail.

To return to the First Saturday in May, I need only to click on the image of trainer Kiaran McLaughlin and Jazil, the future Belmont Stakes winner, sitting in the stall’s hay, both of them, with Jazil’s smallish dark head in Kiaran’s hands, eyes closed, blissed out from the petting of his devoted conditioner. Kiaran, stroking, stroking, says that people can’t imagine the human-racehorse bond approximating that of parenting a dog or a cat, a pet, but there it is, in the Hennegan’s film; all that’s missing is a couch and a TV and a few framed family photos in the backdrop and maybe Kiaran baby-talking, What a good boy…such a good boy…who’s daddy’s best boy?

The First Saturday in May is a lot less about the Kentucky Derby itself as it is about the path to getting there, and that path is so full of funny Technicolor characters bursting with dreams and adoration for their horses that to miss this (you reviewers know who you are) is beyond stupid—it’s cold, it’s numb, it’s pitiful. This movie is all love. The only world these people know is racehorses. The only world anyone in this business knows is racehorses. Racehorses are a 25/7 gig, but to paraphrase the great Mose Allison, these people love the life they live, and they live the life they love, so the exclusion of all else leaves not a single soul wanting.

If you love horses, if you love animals, if you love passionate film making, see this film pronto, this weekend. I can tell you to spread the word but the emotional residue of seeing The First Saturday in May is such that you’ll be doing the wordspread organically, your whips tucked away.

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