WHAT is it about horse movies that makes people snort and whinny their disapproval?
War Horse, strictly speaking, is not really about a horse. It's a film about love, loss and the senselessness of war. But mention War Horse, and a good number of people will tell you that they'd rather eat horse than go see a movie about one.
What about Black Beauty? The Black Stallion? National Velvet? War Horse is a film in the tradition of those classics, an unabashed family film unafraid to wear its heart on its sleeve.
The film focuses on the bond between a boy named Albert (Jeremy Irvine) and a colt named Joey. Albert's father (Peter Mullan) buys the horse mostly to spite his landlord: "there are big days, and there are small days, which will it be?" says Ted, psyching himself up to buy the horse, who is magnificent, but ill-equipped to plow the field and keep the family from going under. Boy and horse make a great team until the First World War and poverty loom, and Joey is sold to an English cavalry officer (Tom Hiddleston).
One million horses went into battle with the British cavalry; only 62,000 returned. Joey too journeys to France, and the horror of the battlefields and trench warfare. One of the film's most lovely scenes involves the actors mounting some 100 horses in the middle of a wheat field, preparing to charge.
Fate intervenes again, and Joey finds himself in the company of a French farmer (Niels Arestrup) and his precocious granddaughter (Celine Buckens), living only a mile or so from the front.
Animals don't pick sides, so the young German soldiers that the horse encounters are viewed just as sympathetically as their British counterparts. One touching exchange takes place in no-man's land, between two warring soldiers who come to the aid of an animal caught in the crossfire. (I heard a few giggles from viewers who found this scene far-fetched; in reality, accounts from the First World War are full of such stories, of warring soldiers who put down arms on Christmas Day, for example, and exchanged cigarettes before fighting resumed.)
As this is by and large a family film, the futility of trench warfare is on full display but not close-ups of the resultant gore. Carnage on the battlefield (both man and animal) is seen from a bird's eye view. There are disturbing scenes, but if your children are old enough to understand the concept of war then the film is nothing if not a good teaching opportunity.
The third character, after the human and equine characters in the film, is the landscape itself, large and lovely even when war is raging. Director Steven Spielberg makes full use of the pastoral vistas and occasionally adds lighting reminiscent of Gone With The Wind (in the film's last scene, for example), for added epic flavour.
The human actors are good (newcomer Jeremy Irvine, in particular) and the horses are amazing. The last encounter between Joey and his horse friend Topthorn will have you sniffling, whether you're a "horsey" person or not.
War Horse is based on Michael Morpurgo's novel, which became a hit on the London stage, which then moved across the pond to acclaim on Broadway and five Tony awards stateside. Under Spielberg's thoughtful direction it's the type of film you'll want to watch again and again. So check your cynicism at the door and enjoy the film for what it is: a deliberate throwback to the days of the sweeping family epic.
