Cinema Review: War Horse (2012)

Steven Spielberg has said numerous times that one of his favourite films is Lawrence of Arabia, so much so that he supposedly watches it before starting production on every movie he makes. War Horse is perhaps the first time that Spielberg’s reverence for David Lean has clearly manifested itself on screen. Its moments of Leanesque grandeur – especially a massed cavalry charge that recalls Doctor Zhivago, albeit with less snow – sit comfortably with more intimate character beats, as exemplified in Lean’s epics. Spielberg is a director whose own style is far from anonymous, however, and he adds his signature crowd-pleasing bravado and penchant for sentimentality to the mix. That heady concoction coalesces to form one of the more satisfying films in the director’s recent career, and a pleasing throwback to old-fashioned Hollywood in the best possible way.

War Horse has its origins in a Michael Morpurgo children’s novella, but the catalyst for this film was the acclaimed West End stage play that gave Spielberg the belief that this narrative originally told from a horse’s first person perspective could be transformed into a film. It’s a real weepie too, wearing its heart on its sleeve as to few films have the confidence to do any more; some moments teeter into mawkishness, especially in the early going, but the sheer sincerity wins you over. The story follows horse Joey from birth in rural Dartmoor through battle in the First World War. During this time he is owned/adopted by numerous people, from farmhand Albert (newcomer Jeremy Irvine, endearing if over-earnest at times) – whose father buys thoroughbred Joey despite his being utterly unsuited to ploughing work – who is the film’s main human protagonist, to an English officer, to a pair of young deserting German solders. Keeping its attention for the most part on Joey, the film is unavoidably episodic but it doesn’t prove to be a drawback in this instance as each individual episode is heartwarming and/or gripping within its own right.

Never shy of a barnstorming set-piece, Spielberg delivers some humdingers here. The aforementioned horse charge is superb, as the British cavalry emerge from fields of tall wheat and sweep through a German encampment. There’s also a prolonged detour into the Battle of the Somme, one of the few times the narrative departs from Joey, which, while owing something to Kubrick’s Paths of Glory as with every subsequent film featuring trench warfare, instantly brings to mind Saving Private Ryan: there’s still no-one better in the business at shooting war. Having said that, War Horse doesn’t replicate the gritty, washed out look that everyone copied after Ryan; it takes a very beautiful classical approach, and is probably the most gorgeously lensed film to come from the Spielberg/Janusz Kaminski partnership. Some could criticise it for being too romanticised, with Dartmoor perpetually bathed in golden sunshine, not to mention the most perfectly cinematic sunset since Gone With the Wind, and even the trenches have an eerie, ethereal beauty.

Spielberg may not quite have the box office clout he used to but he’s still a master manipulator of the emotions. He plays the audience like a fiddle throughout, eliciting laughs, shocks, and a few tears with perfect timing and judgment. One standout scene is a quiet one in which an English and German soldier team up to free Joey from some barbed wire is funny but completely natural and human, not to mention really moving, highlighting the basic insanity of war. Seeing War Horse with a full audience is a joy, as the audience gasps and laughs along in unison. Only the best movies sweep you along as War Horse manages to. It never flinches from the harsh reality but remains a cross-generational crowdpleaser. It’s what event movies used to be like.



Summary
Just as with his recent Tintin, I find myself using the word ‘old-fashioned’ when describing Spielberg’s War Horse, but it’s a word I use in an entirely complimentary sense. War Horse is grand, thrilling entertainment, providing the sort of excitement, emotion and catharsis for which the cinema exists.