Boy meets horse. Boy looses horse. Boy gets horse. It’s the classic formula for a Hollywood love story – albeit with a slightly equestrian twist –and also the plot of War Horse, the latest film from director Steven Spielberg (Tintin), based on the novel by Michael Morpurgo and the award-winning stage production by Nick Stafford. The story follows a horse, named Joey, in a war, named The Great War, and recounts all the ways in which peoples lives were changed through their encounters with the eponymous animal. Like most Spielberg productions, War Horse is populated with many great scenes – scenes of horror, heartbreak, triumph and joy. Unfortunately, they’re trapped in a film that is far too long, and helmed by a director who has failed to differentiate between genuine feeling and cheap emotional manipulation. A little bit of sentiment is one thing, Steven. But this is simply labourious.
From the moment that Albert Narracott (newcomer Jeremy Irvine) lays eyes Joey, he feels a connection that is destined to last a lifetime. A gift to Albert from his father (Peter Mullan; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1), Joey is a strong, wilful but loyal young horse, one who Albert must train to plough the fields lest their home be repossessed by their heartless, money-grubbing landlord (Peter Thewlis; Deathly Hallows Part 2). These first thirty minutes of War Horse are the most insufferable of the lot, as the script drags us through and across every syrupy valley and peak – Joey’s initial failings as a plough-horse to his eventual, plot-assured success – with laughable indulgence. Spielberg shoots scene after scene against the orange sky of dusk – the so called golden hour – as if too lend his story additional dramatic weight. Similarly, John Williams’ tirelessly mawkish score feels explicitly designed to turn every wistful gaze between boy and horse into a tumultuous rollercoaster ride of cloud-parting, earth-shattering emotion.
Things pick up to a canter once war breaks out, and Joey is sold off to a young Major (Tom Hiddleston; Thor) in the British cavalry and is shipped across the English Channel to fight the Germans in France. But with the tides of war constantly changing, it’s not long before Joey changes hands again. And then again. And again. This is the crux of War Horse’s problems. While Joey remains constant, his human owners are constantly changing, and with each new one – be they soldier or civilian, French, English or German – it gets harder and harder to become invested in their stories. Joey, meanwhile, remains consistently a horse. The “performances” of the fourteen different animals that play Joey are fantastic, yet try as I might, I cannot put as much stock in a horse’s life as I can in a person’s.
The reason for the film’s structure – really a series of vignettes – is obvious. Spielberg (and Stafford before him, and Morpurgo before him) wishes to communicate the far reaching devastation of war. In that, the film is successful, and many of the battle sequences, although bloodless, are so intense that parents would do well to leave small children at home. Conversely, there are moments in War Horse that communicate the goodness and humanity that exists in all people, regardless of country or creed. In these moments, War Horse is truly touching.
But the reality is that these scenes would have been so much more powerful if the film wasn’t attempting – and failing – to provoke that same teary sensation for literally its entire runtime. Predictably, the last ten minutes of the movie slide right back into deplorable treacle, ensuring that it is the film’s weaknesses, rather than its strengths, that are on your mind when the end credits role.
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