Review of War Horse (2011) by Absalom — 28 Dec 2011

I was surprised at the reviews here at first, but reading them carefully I realize that the lower ratings are from people who do not understand the genre, have not managed their biases, display idiosyncrasies beyond the normal, or fix on a mote while the redwood stands before them. Ignore them.

The film, taken on its own terms, is nearly perfect. As a child's fable of the costs of war and the necessity of the cardinal virtues of faith, hope and charity - wrapped in the iron of courage - to endure them, Spielberg achieves a fit balance between realistic depiction and human heartedness. Technically, the film is superb. While I chafe at his films for their lack of intellect, over-directed manipulation of sentiment (John Williams needs to retire - he and Spielberg together have reached the point where we must have a musical stick rapping us to tell us what every gesture intends), and an inability to understand subtlety, in WAR HORSE everything comes together. His decision to use film stock lends a richness and depth to his painterly compositions. What could seem like over-planning (another tendency) works here because of the fable involved - we expect and need to see the pictures he presents. HIs care in details (horses' heads coming up together at a crucial moment, movement through a field of grain, a scene of a war's suspension beginning with an uncannily true horse calling episode) expressed through exquisite cinematography and editing tell the tale visually. The entire design of the film - from rural domestic and farm settings to village to French farmhouse to bivouacs to trenches to the engines of war - presented a real world that held the fable perfectly.

Excellent casting and performances throughout by all players, including extreme good fortune in the horses, and a judiciously compressed screenplay allowed the scope of the story to play through while keeping the crucial human scale intact. Characters were instantaneously established without seeming like stock figures. Also, the Spielberg juvenile - that dreaded commodity - did not appear. The young leads and were, in all regards, ennobled and uncloyingly endearing. No villains appeared; all characters were presented as humans caught in something terrible, whether a prewar economic circumstances or war's hangman's clutch. As for realism, again, some reviewers here mistake the genre and sputter over details that are beside the point in this sort of film. One must judge a film on its own terms, or accept being seen as a propagandist, polemicist, or philistine. Or, as can be seen in one review here especially, merely peevish.

I recommend WAR HORSE to anyone interested in a master filmmaker making the most of his great skills, suppressing his lesser tendencies or turning them to advantage, and presenting a simple fable about simple love enduring despite the forces of hate. The entire film, until its last minute, conveys an authenticity and rightness of tone that will delight most moviegoers and not leave them feeling embarrassed afterwards for being moved. They will have been moved, in this case, as children are, for all the right reasons.