Steven Spielberg’s a sly one. He may very well go down in history as the inventor of the “review proof” movie. That’s not to say his films are without their individual flaws, but he certainly doesn’t make writing a few words about them the easiest of tasks. His films are often as rounded as you could possibly make a film with all the bases covered and all potential questions answered. They often go on slightly longer than a person would want them to but you can’t reach the end of what he eventually delivers to confidently declare that it was all a waste of your time. But this feeling of emotional and thematic finality in his work can sometimes be frustrating to the casual watcher and tends to lead to an excessively overwrought and draining viewing experience.
There are times when this emotional completism is perhaps not always necessary and comes up against criticism, especially with Spielberg’s more narrower genre pictures like Jurassic Park and Minority Report, where fairytale conclusions with “The End” (whether literal or metaphorical) branded firmly on their behinds tend to stick out like a, erm, branded bottom.
War Horse is not one of those pictures and it’s powerful emotional journey is as satisfying as it is required.
Your experience of the film may depend entirely on how you view it’s structure. It either has a perfectly straight forward narrative wherein the main protagonist is a horse who has no plainly translated communications with other animals or an internal monologue to connect itself directly with the audience; or it’s a running tableau of barely connected stories strung together using the passing ownership of an animal as it’s binding apparatus. Perhaps it’s a failing on my part that I saw it as the latter, as the original Michael Morpurgo children’s book on which this is based (along with the subsequent stage production) is most definitely written from a first person/equine perspective.
This running narrative which abandons and introduces characters at will can only have been a challenge for the film’s screenwriters Richard Curtis and Lee Hall, who make sure not to rely on just one connecting device to keep things together (although Joey The Horse is certainly the main one). It’s attention deficient narrative manages not to test our patience or become too experimental or showy, in fact it’s as much an exercise in carefully crafted call-backs as it is about moving forward and delivering new experiences. That’s where the screenplay’s success and moral centre lies I suppose - in remembrance.
In simpler terms War Horse is a constant stream of Act 1s that subtly slips you an Act 2 and an Act 3 without you noticing it.
Inevitably in a film such as this there are times where your attention might wander briefly. I think that happened to me about twice during the whole movie, but I was yanked back each time by a burst of poignancy or intense activity. Repeat viewings will reveal the importance of the more subtle and seemingly toilet-break friendly scenes that undoubtedly bring something crucial to the thematic collage of the film. You’re simply required to take in a lot of new information throughout, which isn’t what we’re used to from contemporary Hollywood cinema.
But aside from the complex rolling narrative of wars and horses the overriding theme of the film is an encouraging one. The moments when my emotions came to the surface and I found myself fighting hard to hold back the tears (I didn’t succeed) were not found in the sad and hopeless ones, although there are those for sure, but in the portrayal of the strength and stubbornness of the human spirit and the undefeated love, camaraderie and kindness that’s shared between all living creatures. It’s a novel concept in an art form devised to show us something we’re not accustomed to having shown to us, but War Horse bravely reminds us that the vast majority of people are essentially good and compromising and that the strength of will and charity can overpower all odds and survive even the most unimaginable of horrors.
In that respect it’s probably a good film to have in your collection for days when you feel like the whole world is against you and you find yourself at your lowest ebb.
Visually we’re seeing a new side to Spielberg here. Although he’s always dealt with stories on a large scale and entertained us with his unique visual motifs, War Horse takes a few steps back to paint it’s tale (no pun intended) on a larger canvass than we thought was possible from the director. After helming around twenty-seven visually arresting full length features this is the first one by Spielberg that can truly be described as an epic, whilst somehow remaining uniquely intimate. It’s strongest influence and guiding inspiration has to be one Sir David Lean, which you notice most of all in the bookend scenes set amongst the English countryside where Spielberg and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski make the environment glow and shimmer as if illuminated by light bouncing off convenient bodies of water. You could argue negatively that in these sequences the reflectors run away from the filmmakers slightly and the light sources erroneously contradict each other, but the overall effect is quite magical, recalling Alex Thomson’s memorable work on Ridley Scott’s Legend.
I don’t think it’d be wrong of me to say that this is perhaps the prettiest film that Spielberg has made to date and is without a doubt lensman Kaminski’s show. I’d even go so far as to say that it’s quite a reservedly directed film that more often than not pauses to painstakingly add brushstrokes to it’s detailed lighting pallet as opposed to indulging in complicated moving concept shots. This reserved quality might also be largely due to the abundant use of animal actors on screen who probably don’t always work well with dancing camera setups, but I suppose that’s a given.
Performance wise War Horse has an impressively sturdy arsenal of character actors on it’s side who really get their day on the battlefield here (pun intended this time). It’s a film of faces you half recognise but might not always be able to put a name to (I think at one point I regrettably said to myself: “oh that’s what’s-his-name from thingy”), but we all know Peter Mullen, Emily Watson and David Thewlis and such stalwarts do well to give the film a very human voice and backbone (there’s a key close-up of Watson after her son receives some bad news in the post that’s possibly my favourite shot in the entire movie). One particular casting highlight for me was that of Tom Hiddleston as a kindly army captain, who’s gentle charisma and natural charm lightens some of the earlier scenes immensely - an appealing trait that’s surely to keep him in rewarding and steady work for quite some time.
At it’s heart War Horse is an old fashioned looking film and brings back to the screen the lost art of grand and operatic cinematic sweep in the vein of Gone With The Wind and the work of the aforementioned David Lean. It’s beautiful backdrops and very particular use of silhouettes, shading and emotive blusters of wind reminds us of just how remarkably beautiful the world is around us and how both fragile and resilient life can be.
It’s not a perfect film, but then again perfect films rarely are.
5/5
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