War Horse

While talking to my friend about War Horse, he told me that he initially thought there was some deeper meaning to the title; it wasn’t until later that he found out that the movie is literally about a horse in a war. Any kind of serious discussion about the movie from that point on was impossible. This makes the review all that more difficult to write because Steven Spielberg takes his story very seriously. You know the one about a horse, in a war.

Steven Spielberg takes us back to just before the start to The Great War. It opens on a young Albert Narracott, played by newcomer Jeremy Irvine, who takes his first look at the pony which he will one day own named Joey. The beginning 45-minutes of the movie not only set up the bond between the horse and his owner but set the tone of being over romanticized and overly-dramatic. With sweeping landscapes and a beautiful setting it is tough not to be taken in by the beauty of the movie. The music though is too on the nose to be taken completely seriously. John Williams, who composes the score, goes full throttle trying to bring the weepies out of the viewing audience. The sentiment these two frequent partners in crime are trying to get off is clear, it is never more noticeable than this segment of the film but the tone carries on the rest of the way.

The story has now been told through the written word, on stage, and now takes to the screen. This may be hard to understand but of the three versions, the one with a real horse may be the least believable. The story comes from the 1982 novel where the horse is the narrator of the story. It then took to the stage where it won a TONY for best play by using wonderfully crafted puppetry reminiscent of what “The Lion King” has been doing in front of packed houses for over a decade now. Spielberg decided to use a real animal and let the people around him do the narration and allow the horse to be perceived as it normally would be. The animal truly is beautiful and after viewing the movie, it is impressive just what they were able to train this animal to do. But one thing it can’t give you is a reaction shot as the horse is just going to look at the camera no matter how many close-ups of its face you give it, and there were a lot. In the other two mediums there was a level of mysticism behind the story telling because the animal wasn’t real so you allowed yourself to be taken away by the emotional plight of the character. Here it looks almost like they are trying to make up for what they lost by being over-romanticized and the outcome just makes it look cheesy.

Once the actual war begins the director creates more genuine moment. One of the most memorable come from the horse’s war time owner Captain Nicholls played by Tom Hiddleston as we witness first hand one of the most notable moments in wartime history in the transition of fighting styles to automatic weapons. One other moment comes towards the end of the movie; feel free to jump to the next paragraph as there are SPOILERS AHEAD. But not really as this is the moment before the climax of the film, I’ll do my best to be vague. It features two soldiers coming out of their respective trenches to aid the horse which was stuck in barbed wire in no man’s land. While coming off initially corny I appreciate the filmmaker referencing a little known moment in history called the Christmas Truce that took place across the Western Front between the warring sides. It is no surprise that Spielberg is able to properly capture these moments of war as he has had so much experience in the past creating them.

One of the most talented filmmakers of our time, Speirberg takes his expertise in both action packed war movies and childhood films and is able to create quite the hybrid that is getting a lot of award talk. The accolades the movie has received may be more attributed to the source material, the timing, and the man behind the project than the film itself. He does create a movie that can be viewed by audiences of all ages and that is something rarely seen in movie making anymore. B-