The First World War–set War Horse is Steven Spielberg’s formulaic, epic ode to friendship, courage and horses.
USA
3*
Director:
Steven Spielberg
Screenwriters:
Lee Hall
Richard Curtis
Director of Photography:
Janusz Kaminski
Running time: 145 minutes
The key to understanding War Horse lies in a shot that occurs about 45 minutes into the film.
What starts as a close-up of a horse lying on the battlefield gradually shifts, as the camera moves backwards and upwards, to reveal an entire field strewn with equine carcasses. The image is a direct copy of the signature shot of the classic Gone with the Wind, in which a city street in downtown Atlanta is filled with hundreds of bloodied bodies of the injured, the dying and the dead – all victims of the Civil War.
The link between the two shots is director Steven Spielberg’s very clear desire to present his central character, the titular war horse named Joey, as he would a human being. If you fail to see this horse as any less human than the individuals who dot the narrative, you will find the experience very frustrating indeed. Though Spielberg stops short of having the animal speak, one has the very firm impression throughout that the horse can understand the humans perfectly.
War Horse starts by making a play for the audience’s emotions immediately. The teenage Albert Narracott (Jeremy Irvine) lives on his parents’ farm in Devon, England, surrounded by green pastures and rolling hills. In a drunken stupor, his father – as in most of Spielberg’s films, here too the father is either absent or somehow severely lacking as a parent – buys a show horse for the astronomical price of 30 guineas in an attempt to rile up the other bidder, his landlord. But the family doesn’t have the money, so the landlord gives them an ultimatum: Train the horse to plough the field and earn back the money by next summer or lose the house.
Of course, despite the odds, Joey the horse is trained remarkably easily by young Albert, who by virtue of his combination of sincerity, determination and humility seems to speak to the horse. Actually, he does speak to the horse, and the horse listens. Also, in the matter of a few minutes, Albert and Joey establish their own code of communication: If Albert cups his hands and blows into them to imitate an owl, Joey will come running. When the boy and the horse are tragically separated, we already start imagining what this framing device will look like come the climax.
This listening is one of the baffling aspects of the film that many viewers might find too difficult to swallow. Though it is often noted that Joey is “a remarkable horse”, its reason for being so extraordinary is never explained. To be sure, Joey overcomes some terrible obstacles along the way, most notably the First World War, and accomplishes some daring feats, but mostly it is taken for granted the horse will make it to the end of the film no matter what.
Joey travels between many owners, sometimes because they are killed, sometimes because the horse is captured by someone else. A significant part of the film is made up of these loose threads in which the individual, briefly in possession of the horse but always respectful towards the animal, discovers just how wonderful the young stallion is. In the end, the threads are loosely connected, but by that stage, you might need to have some teeth pulled because of the syrupy storyline you’ve been subjected to already.
Again and again, War Horse portrays Joey as a horse with human qualities, and in the face of the obvious sentimentality that Spielberg conveys with his spotlights and his soft focus, many of these scenes work almost in spite of themselves. A particularly touching moment comes when Joey cares for Topthorn, a companion horse that resembles everyone’s idea of Black Beauty.
Joey is clearly the film’s central attraction, but he is special only because he is the title character and Spielberg’s camera loves him. At one point, in a dazzling moment that will forever be associated with the film, just as the boys riding their bicycles toward the moon is tied to E.T., Joey gallops heroically across a battlefield in a single, unbroken take, while explosions rock the night sky.
For all the galloping and the detailed recreations of battle scenes and the ghastly trenches of the First World War, the film is about a promise Albert made to Joey: “Wherever you are, I will find you, and I will bring you home!” The stench of sentimentality could easily have been worse than the stench of the dugouts on the frontlines, but for the most part, Spielberg’s creativity transcends his material.