It’s the move that has been dubbed “Spielberg’s best work yet” so my expectations were always going to be high. Just days after my visit to the small Art house cinema in Richmond to see The Artist, I chose to visit The Odeon Leicester Square which boasts one of Britain’s biggest screen, this was going to be an experience at least.
Now strangely enough War Horse is a movie about a war and a horse, but there is slightly more to it, it’s essentially the episodic journey of Joey (the horse that is the War Horse) through several different owners taking him around Europe from picturesque British countryside to murky World War One battlefields. A narrative oozing sentiment, which many consider to be Spielberg’s forte, this movie was bound to make my eyes water, but it didn’t. The problem I have with War Horse is that it’s too episodic, having read the Michael Morpurgo novel in my youth, I would deem it an impossible book to make into a movie, because there’s so much moving around that the audience simply doesn’t have the chance to get any sort of emotional attachment to the various owners, apart from maybe Albert (the original owner). Interestingly enough the big time film critics rave about it saying how it reduced them to tears on many occasions, but I’m a little confused, were we watching the same movie? Because, yes certain bits were sad but I wasn’t even close to crying at any point in the film. Maybe it’s because I’m an unemotional teenaged boy, but I cried at the end of American Beauty (2000), which my mother actually chuckled at (and really you won’t find anyone more emotional than my mother).
Anyway let’s get back to the point here, it was too busy moving around trying to be vast and trying to capture these little lives lead by the various owners that there simply wasn’t time to get fully emotionally involved with any of the characters, I felt entirely detached. However the fact that I didn’t sob my heart out doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good film, it was a good film, although it took a while to take off, and I found myself slightly impatient in the opening third, but once the battle sequences got underway, I was enthralled, it was vintage Spielberg, like a combination of the gush of E.T and the excitement of the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan, a winning combination one might suggest? One thing is for certain it took Spielberg’s touch to make War Horse the film that it is, without his experience and clear talent for finding the right visuals to tell the story; it would be a decidedly average film. Having said that the lead, Jeremy Irvine, was superb, and this is his first movie so he did a very decent job and I’ll look forward to his announced role in Great Expectations alongside Helena Bonham Carter. Tom Hiddleston was also good (the guy who plays the captain, Joeys second owner). So the acting wasn’t the problem. I suppose my real trouble with it is I wanted so much more from it. It is a perfectly respectable movie, but that’s all it is. I so badly wanted it to be ‘Spielberg’s finest work and I am aware that I’ve mentioned him a lot but I do think he made the film work when it probably wouldn’t have otherwise.
The British countryside was shot beautifully and might I add all on location, and what I found interesting was that it was shot on 35mm film, which in the modern digital age is rare but it certainly added this feeling of nostalgia, and the movie had this glow about it which was very enchanting. Oh and the horse, I almost forgot to mention the horse, yes the horse was good too, not quite in the same calibre as the Jack Russell in The Artist but further proof that animals can act. In fact there was this very painful scene where Joey gets caught up in barbed wire and the way the horse moves and the sounds it makes does make the audience feel very uncomfortable whether that’s down to the camera work or the horse itself, is another matter, but I feel that was done very well and (without trying to give too much away) there is a certain scene concerning a windmill which is just cinematic genius.
Anyway that’s War Horse for you, a very sound picture that’s worth a watch but don’t expect anything ground-breaking. Let me know your views and reviews of War Horse or any other movie you’ve seen this week on my Facebook page, just hit the like button and get writing (instructions of how to find it at the top of my homepage).
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