Movies: War Horse
Monday, December 26, 2011
Albert (Jeremy Irvine) trains his horse, Joey,
to plow and the two are best friends.
Then, against Albert's wishes, Joey goes off to World War I.
Photo: Andrew Cooper/DreamWorks Pictures
Steven Speilberg begins his latest film, War Horse in a much simpler time, a time when innocence was real, when people were born in one place and pretty much lived their entire lives in that place. Based on a 1982 novel of the same by Michael Morpurgo, the movie opens at a horse auction in rural England. Farmer Ted Narracott (Peter Mullan) gets caught up in the moment and bids more than he can afford to acquire a half-Thoroughbred. To pay the rent, the horse must be taught to plow. While Narracott’s wife Rosie (Emily Watson) can barely contain her fury and despair at the purchase of the horse, Ted’s son Albert (Jeremy Irvine) falls in love with the animal. He names it Joey and does, indeed, teach it to plow.
When World War I arrives, Ted sneaks off to town with Joey to sell him to the British Army and Joey assumes the role of warhorse. Albert is furious and heartbroken but, too young to enlist, he must let his beloved horse go off to war alone.
Speilberg’s war scenes are not nearly as explicit as they were in, say, Saving Private Ryan. But they are nonetheless very effective at depicting the truth of the hell that is war.
During World War I the combatants used gas to fight the enemy to great effect. That fact is part of the story when the Germans bombard the British with mustard gas. Also during that war, as science still had not developed effective mechanical methods for moving armament from one place to another, horses were used. I heard recently that one million horses were sent from England to the front during World War I. Only 60,000 returned.
War Horse is a hugely successful play, done first by the National Theatre in London and, then, at Lincoln Center in New York. There, the horses are puppets, and the productions have been very well received. In the movie, of course, the horses are real and it is, perhaps, the saddest part of the movie to see the fate of so many of the animals during that war. Eight horses were used to portray Joey.
But it is also a very human story. The actors are fine. Joey spends time in France at the farm of a grandfather (Neils Arstrup) and his granddaughter (Celine Buckens) and the sequence is very moving.
This is an example of good, old-fashioned film making and it is a lovely movie. Janusz Kaminski ‘s cinematography captures the time and place beautifully, as do the sets, costumes and every period detail.
To get the most out of it, the audience members should probably park their cynicism at the theater entrance and just relax, go with the flow and allow themselves to be moved.
(2 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)
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