As a film, in the way D.W. Griffith might have imagined them, War Horse, the new Steven Spielberg epic war drama-slash-coming-of-age story-slash-amazing-animal tall tale, is a near perfect piece of filmmaking. To me, however, under-educated film-lover that I am, it was, for the most part, boring. At 146 minutes, it’s by no means overlong, but 146 minutes is a long time to be repeating one phrase to yourself: “who gives a shit about a fucking horse?”
In the film’s opening scene, this goddamn animal is born in an open field of pristine, almost Technicolor grass. Where is this field? The rolling, remarkably beautiful green hills with the uniform clusters of trees seemed, at least to me, to belong to some past that exists only in our minds. Even the dialog and the characterization are too perfect, as if all these people dropped out of the sky with their lives planned and their lines memorized. Even Emily Watson, as smart and capable a performer as she’s always been, is swallowed up in the story.
Every actor, every character in this story, is smothered in the archetype their meant to fill out. David Thewlis plays the wicked landlord, who laughs, saying that that horse will never be able to plow a field. Peter Mullan plays the family’s drunken patriarch, who pays far too much for a horse that seems to have no practical use on a farm. And Jeremy Irvine, as the boy who never stops believing that his horse can do it.
With all this said, War Horse is not simply a drab retelling of an age-old tale. Spielberg’s camera is as vibrant as ever, and gets full room to roam during a truly rousing battle sequence. However, these positives were not enough to make me give a shit about this fucking horse.
2 stars
