War Horse

Saw War Horse. It was treacly and saccharine but also quite sweet. It opens like a Rockwell painting, full of cute ugliness. A proud drunk pisses his family's savings away on a purely decorative horse. He goes home to his shrewish wife, hounded by his cruel landlord. This is the stuff domestic abuse is made of, but there is also a bossy goose, and a stunningly pretty sunset, and somehow the whole thing feels quaint and cute. This is what Spielberg does: spin ugliness into schmaltz. His films annoy me because I feel they are convincing lies. When I watch his films, I feel fooled. I've written before in this blog about the power of dreams and lies to transform, but something about Spielberg's films rubs me the wrong way. I feel like I'm watching a ceremony, not a drama. I feel like I'm being brought somewhere, not led somewhere. Anyway, enough of this pretentious blather.

The film stars a noble horse who is raised by the drunk's son who is the only good thing about the farm-house: a dude who is constantly adorable, supremely competent, and always wearing tight pants. He almost saves the farm when (wham, bam) WW1 starts. This introduces the sub-theme of the film (the super-theme being schmaltz and lots of it) of old fashions being supplanted by the crass new. The horse especially is put in opposition to motorcars. At one point, a stable-boy drops a harness on the ground, only for a motor-car to run over it (SYMBOLISM!!) Later on, the horse has some kind of face-off with an actual tank (why is the tank chasing a perfectly ordinary horse? No one knows.) These comparisons are sometimes subtle, but not usually. At one point a German force has cut down the twittish English cavalry with machine guns. As the captain sits aloft on his horse, surrounded by guns, a German shouts at him "who do you think you are?!" The reign of the noble individual is over. The Germans are the cruel harbingers of things to come.

The film is episodic, following the horse as it is captured and recaptured by the different sides of the war. Some episodes are truly winning, like the nearly magical sequence with the sickly French girl. A lot of the film is extremely indulgent however. It's effective, don't get me wrong, but it's really obvious. At one point, the adorable French girl stands exactly between two horses. "This is Francois, and this Claude," she declares "I named them after two boys who broke my heart last summer." I laughed out loud at this inhuman cuteness. Of course you did, sweetheart. Of course you did. The film is calculatedly adorable but adorable none the less.