Produced by George Martin; overproduced by Phil Spector. -George Martin on The Beatles album Let It Be
War Horse is an epic that wants to make sure you know that it is an Epic. Steven Spielberg goes over the top with camera angles, strange lighting, and a closing scene filmed in silhouette like the Burning of Atlanta sequence from Gone With The Wind. There were several times when hard lighting threw shadows on buildings-from multiple directions, on cloudy days. These seemed to be a nod of the head to other Broadway plays that have been turned into movies, it’s impossible to image that Spielberg included these obvious mistakes unintentionally.
War Horse was a children’s book, then a play, and then a movie. The play was famous for using giant horse puppets and the book is told from the point of view of Joey the horse. We follow Joey from birth to his various and sundry heroics, from plowing a field that can’t be plowed to bringing a short break to the fighting on the front lines in World War One.
Joey ends up in the hands of random people at random places and his presence is a curse on every life that he touched. People that care for this horse end up injured or dead-even the one other horse that befriends Joey meets with a bad end. To be fair it is war and people die left and right, even when they don’t know Joey.
War Horse wants to be something more than it. Just as The Artist was not really a silent film, War Horse is not really a Cecil B. DeMille epic with a cast of thousands. But then, Steven Spielberg hasn’t had much luck over the past few years trying to be Steven Spielberg, so he might as well go for being DeMille.
I liked the story and for the most part War Horse was a beautiful film to look at, I just could have lived without all the odd production details. The only times I really felt any emotion had nothing to do with the story of our proud and noble horse. I’m always in awe of the general stupidity of the British Army in WWI and it’s desire to throw itself in front of German machine guns.
