David O'ConnellWar Horse
December 28th 2011 07:38
Nobody can doubt the purity of storytelling present in Steven Spielberg’s War Horse. But this equine odyssey, adapted from Michael Morpurgo’s child-friendly recounting of a horse’s outlandish survival in war time resounds with manipulation and a discouragingly naïve, almost fatally puerile reduction of events.
From the moment Devon youngster Albert Narracott (Jeremy Irvine) fixes his gaze upon the unprepossessing Joey as a foal, he senses a profound bond. Naturally he couldn’t be more joyous when his father absurdly puts their family’s livelihood in jeopardy by forking out an exorbitant amount for him even though he needs a workhorse to plough his fields, not an aesthetically pleasing equine bred to grace a green field with his beauty alone.
After Joey proves his worth he gets sold off to a soldier when war breaks out. The boy and his best friend must part and so Joey’s tumultuous journey through the hands of multiple owners and across many lands begins, culminating four years later and the end of battle nears with a physically, though not mentally grown Albert drawn into Joey’s vicinity once again.
What ultimately decides the fate of War Horse – regardless of whether the creature ultimately survives or has the curtain drawn around his wilting frame - is the grinding, relentless simplicity of the film, from virtually all of its cardboard cut-out characters to the hollow sweep of Joey’s cross-continental odyssey against the odds and into the waiting arms of Spielberg-sanctioned immortality.
The film, in reducing its hero to a mythically proportioned generalisation of heroism, exposes itself to more radical interpolations of Joey’s symbolic power. Can we interpret the resolute equine as a Christ-like figure, his famed run through barbed-wired fences like the crowning of thorns? Then there's the veneration he receives afterwards, able to draw parties from warring sides to temporarily suspend hostilities, share a joke and tend to his wounds, speaking volumes for the universality of his power.
In other key moments, Joey even seems to offer benediction to another fledgling, broken-down equine in his moment of passing from this world, his suffering acknowledged with a meaningful nod and a startling shot of his frame rimmed by a heavenly golden halo. This horse, so close to extinction but having been raised from the dead through sheer will power displays the startling capacity to bring a disparate crowd of battle weary soldiers to their feet, to draw them around in an awed circle to gaze wonderstruck upon his divine presence.
Noble, picturesque and earnest though it may be, War House fails in more fundamental ways: it’s dull and insipid, with a lone sequence - a realistic battle charge - its sole redeeming feature. The irritating Albert is so simply portrayed that you almost assume he’s suffering from some intellectual disabilit; and nothing in Irvine’s limited repertoire can strengthen an argument to the contrary.
Unless temporarily paralysed by a bout of nostalgic reasoning or fear of evoking spirits of Christmas past should they counter their offspring’s likely enthusiasm for this tripe, your average adult will cringe at the obviousness of Lee Hall and Richard Curtis’s by-the-numbers patchwork screenplay (in the case of the latter, is this really the same man who has penned the likes of Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and The Vicar of Dibley?).
The other minor parts are played with such laughable gravity that you have to assume they’re in on the joke: the iron-fisted stoicism of Peter Mullan as Albert’s father; the clichéd bad guy played by David Thewlis who wields the power to reduce the struggling family to grovelling on their knees for assistance if Joey is unable to do what his breed should not, by rights, be capable of enduring; and Emily Watson as the cliched long-suffering wife, the glue who holds the family unit tentatively in place with the rigidity of her spirit.
War Horse (2011) is Spielbergian fodder for the masses, a predictable, overextended fable laden with sentimental overtones; a feature only encouraged by John Williams fine but overstated score, a return to the more pastoral musical terrain of Far and Away (1992), Seven Years in Tibet (1997) and The Patriot (2000).
| 62 |
| Vote |
subscribe to this blog
Comment by Janice H.
Exploring the Paranormal
I could not understand why several families brought 5 year olds to the PG13 movie. Then there were the idiots who remarked behind me "why is everyone speaking with an accent?" The couple next to me brought their own bottle and it was not soda. Makes you wonder about the Christmas movie crowd.
Comment by David O'Connell
Screen Fanatic