War Horse (2011)
Certified: PG
Duration: 146 minutes
Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Jeremy Irvine, Emily Watson, Peter Mullan, Tom Hiddleston, David Thewlis, Benedict Cumberbatch, Toby Kebbell, Eddie Marsan, Geoff Bell, Patrick Kennedy, Niels Arestrup
KRS release

About three years ago I read and fell in love with Michael Morpurgo’s 1982 young adult novel War Horse.

Steven Spielberg’s adaptation does the source material justice as we are given a majestic epic that is filled with emotions, rich characters and a strong sense of relevancy.

On a quick note, World War I was a bloody war that sent the young men of many nations into the bloody mincing machines that were the muddy fields of such hitherto unknown places as the Somme, Ypres and Verdun.

In the scenes of destruction that the film so eloquently shows, a bit of maths will put everything in perspective: Out of every 1,500 British horses that were taken to war, only two made it back alive.

The film is set in 1914 during World War I. Young Albert (Jeremy Irvine) lives on a farm with an alcoholic father, Ted (Peter Mullan), and his mother Rose (Emily Watson). They are always in danger of having their farm taken from them by the landlord Lyons (David Thewlis), because of money problems. This situation is exasperated when Ted, needing a horse for plowing fields, goes overboard in his bidding for a race horse.

The horse named Joey turns the tables on them all when he is trained by Albert and succeeds in this task.

But when their harvest is ruined, they end up selling their prized horse to the British Army. Captain Nicholls (Tom Hiddlestone), seeing Albert so devastated, tells him that this is just a lease and that by the end of the war the horse will be given back to Albert.

The film follows the adventures of the horse in the blood-drenched battlegrounds in France during the war.

The horse ends up under a variety of owners, including a young French girl Emilie (Celine Buckens) and German horse keeper Gunther and his younger brother Michal (David Kross & Leonard Carow).

The fateful year 1914 rolls on and the war goes on for longer than expected. Albert is now ready to be enlisted and he too ends up in the army in France hoping to see Joey once again.

War Horse succeeds on many levels. Mr Spielberg’s film brings to the screen well the noble gravitas of the horse and the connection that exists between owner and horse. Couple this with the manner in which Mr Spielberg expertly brings to the fore the all-encompassing horrors of war and War Horse leaves quite an impression.

Another factor in the film’s favour is that Joey, the horse in question, looks and behaves like a real horse; this gives the film a noble core that only an equine hero can bring.

Mr Spielberg knows this and, through Janusz Kaminski’s cinematography skills, the nobility of the animal rises above the pettiness of the war in frame after frame.

The film offers spectacle not just in the grave backdrops but also in such sequences as the cavalry charge sequence.

The human cast has some really tremendous roles. Jeremy Irvine as teary-eyed Albert is heartbreaking especially in the parting scene. Peter Mullan and Emily Watson fit well together while David Thewlis bringsin the element of class divide very harshly.

Mr Spielberg, who has made one of the best war films ever in Saving Private Ryan, here brings a different sensibility and the combination is a winning one. The director who had given us a sense of wonder with ET, does it again but mixes into the pot a sense of gravity.

War Horse is a must-see event on the cinema screen which is its natural home.

The film opens in Maltese cinemas tomorrow.