This movie is definitely not:
The Healer (2017) (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4356480)
Whereas this one has a similar story, but it’s too recent:
One Fall (2016) (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1563740)
I saw this probably sometime between 2010 – 2014, but could’ve been earlier. Mostly likely I saw it on Amazon Prime. This was a low-budget, independent movie, but it was not as amateurish as many Prime films. The acting was OK. There was an actual story.
It was in color. I’m pretty sure it was in English and took place in the US, somewhere rural. But don’t hold me to that. 🙂
A youngish man, late 20s/early 30s, comes home to his parents’ house, after being absent for a while. On the morning after he arrives, he and his dad are standing on the front porch chatting, when a bird suddenly flies into a window next to them and falls to the ground. The young guy bends down and picks it up. You can see that its neck is broken and it’s dead. He holds it for a minute or so while continuing to talk to his dad, and all of a sudden the bird stands up, flutters its wings and flies off. Dad stands there looking shocked. The son says something like, “I guess it wasn’t dead after all.” He doesn’t want his father to know he has this gift. (Don’t remember why.)
There’s another scene where the guy is walking by some railroad tracks, and he comes across a sick-looking cat. The cat is hostile and just stands there hissing at him. But he is gentle with it, and soon afterward, he brings the cat some food, and the cat starts to trust him, and allow the guy to pet it. Next you see, the cat looks great, it’s healthy and friendly.
There’s a young woman in the story, and I’m not sure exactly who she was, but I think she might’ve been his sister. She finds out about his gift, and keeps his secret. Then something happens, which I do not remember, where he as to make some kind of sacrifice in order to save someone (the sister, maybe?), and the sacrifice turns out to be his healing gift.
Some time later, he’s walking around outside, and he comes across the cat, dead and dried up. It looks like it had died a while back, as though when the guy lost his healing power, everything went back to how it was previously for whomever he had saved, as though it had never happened.
The movie has a slow, contemplative feel, kind of poignant. It has a faded color palette, like beiges and light browns. The grass is dry. The area looks kind of poor. I don’t remember how it ends.
I can’t say it was a great movie, but it moved me and I’d like to see it again if possible. Thanks for your help!
Not sure if this helps or not, but “The Fall” actually came out in 2011 not 2016, imdb got it wrong.
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMEscjtmNwU
Sorry, that should have been “One Fall” not The Fall.
sandnc – yes, I realized that last night when I watched One Fall, just in case maybe that was it after all. The date on the description page on Amazon did say 2012 (not 2011 – but I’m beginning to think this isn’t an exact science :)). Anyway, One Fall is not the movie I was thinking of. However, please see my following message!
OMG – I **found** the movie I was looking for! I dug a little deeper on IMDb by searching for “healing-touch” under keywords, which didn’t turn up anything, and then I tried “healing-power,” and bingo! There it was. I don’t know why I didn’t think of doing that before. (I did search Amazon Prime and Google on terms like “healing touch,” etc, which gave me a million irrelevant hits.)
The movie is called “Son of the Sunshine.” It’s from Canada, not the US. I watched a couple of trailers on the IMDb page and it looked pretty much how I remembered it, except that I got some of the plot points wrong. For one thing, he never left town and then came back after a long absence. Don’t know where I got that from – maybe “One Fall,” LOL.
I also forgot the main issue in the plot: the lead character had Tourette’s Syndrome! I don’t know how that little fact slipped my mind! He had surgery to correct it – which I don’t believe exists in real life, except maybe in certain rare cases? Well, neither does healing by touch, so chalk it up to magical realism. Anyway, the surgery took away his involuntary outbursts, which allowed him to start pulling his life together. But it also took away his healing power. That was the poignant part that I do remember.
I really want to watch it again, but Amazon doesn’t have it anymore. 🙁 Neither does Netflix. I did a Google search and it looks like I can get it from Itunes, so I will try that.
So this can be marked as solved, even if I did answer my own question!
Glad you found it and thanks for letting us know!