Steven Spielberg’s latest, War Horse, welds the boy-and-his-horse tearjerker with the isn’t-war-senseless gripping depiction of World War I battle scenes. Benign film manipulation rarely gets this good.
Plumbing the depths of wretched hand-to-hand trench warfare, the film’s calm eye of the hurricane is equine Joey, who we first meet in a tranquil Devon just before the war. Grandiose without being rash or maudlin, Spielberg starts us off with with the calm, idyllic pre-war Devon (brilliantly shot by cinematographer Janusz Kaminski) where Joey first meets the tenant farmer family who adopt him. There’s Peter Mullan as the hard-drinking veteran of the Boers War, his steadying wife Emily Watson and their son Jeremy Irvine. An oppressive landlord (David Thewlis) threatens to take their farm away if their equine investment doesn’t begin paying off. Irvine develops a bond with Joey that has him plowing like all get out. Seems this horse has plenty of drive and stamina.
He’ll need it. What follows once Joey’s sold to the British Army at the verge of the war’s outset, is a whirling odyssey that will see Joey change hands numerous times, and even end up with the Germans for awhile. Captured along the way are stirring vignettes such as when Joey ends up with a rural French adolescent girl and her grandfather. Much as the film earlier depicted the prewar English class system, it equally portrays the innocence of everyday folk caught up in the war’s grip. An expression heard repeatedly in the film, “The war has taken everything from everyone,” couldn’t be more true.
Mullan (My Name is Joe, Tyrannosaurus), Watson (Breaking The Waves) and Thewlis (Naked), are three of the U. K.’s finest actors, and press notes claim all of seven different horses comprised Joey’s role, but the real star here is Spielberg. The action, which is never overweening, comes to a blistering crescendo in its first battle scene. Though understated compared to the opening scenes in Saving Private Ryan, Joey’s supremely confident British regiment charging an unsuspecting German contingent to a surprising result, is every bit as powerful. It’s not until a climactic “truce” that Spielberg presents his trademark optimism in humanity. He chases it down by then flouting the Black Stallion-ish aspects of his film but, hey, this is a boy-and-horse story, remember?
Sentimentality, always an important thread in classic American cinema, often mars even works of the highest intention. Spielberg here, as he has so often, opts for clemency in judging our baser instincts. No one alive can make an old- fashioned film this convincingly. Do you really want to nitpick this time of year and disagree with him?
8.5 Unfettered Steeds (out of 10)