A horse of a different color

This week, CineVerse took a closer look at Steven Spielberg's War Horse, which yielded an impassioned discussion from our group. Here's a roundup of our verbal analysis:

WHAT DID YOU EXPECT OF THIS FILM, AND HOW DID IT DIFFER FROM THOSE EXPECTATIONS?

•        It’s an episodic film that essentially works more as a series of set pieces and vignettes linked together than as a strong traditional narrative.

•        With great attention to period detail and gritty accuracy, it effectively depicts the battlefields of World War I, a major war that has been relatively overlooked in cinema history compared to the Civil War and WWII; however, it doesn’t have the same level of blood, gore, and graphic violence that, say, Saving Private Ryan does. War Horse is more of a family film that even younger children can watch.

•        There is no false advertising here; as indicated in the title, the main protagonist is a horse, whom we follow throughout the movie. This is a challenging feat for the filmmakers, who chose to avoid the approach of the original novel, which told the story from the horse’s point of view. While we can possibly identify with his young owner, it’s difficult to identify with an animal that cannot talk or convey emotions like a human being.

THIS HAS BEEN CALLED A THROWBACK MOVIE, AN HOMAGE TO THE GOLDEN AGE OF HOLLYWOOD ERA OF THE LATE 1930S, EARLY 1940S. WHAT’S THE PROOF OF THIS THEORY?

•        Spielberg’s chosen canvas is melodrama: a genre that uses melody and drama to manipulate audiences into sweeping ranges of emotional response—from joy to sadness to fear to laughter to relief and love. Spielberg’s goal here is to make you cry and to develop a strong emotional attachment to Joey and Albert.

•        Melodramas were prevalent during Hollywood’s golden age, when filmmakers like David O. Selznick, John Ford, Douglas Sirk and others made memorable films designed to stir your emotions, including Gone with the Wind, How Green Was My Valley, Casablanca, Wuthering Heights, Magnificent Obsession and many others. This picture is a loving tribute to a filmmaking approach that was abandoned long ago—where nostalgia, sentimentalism and emotional extremes are plumbed to get a strong response from viewers.

•        Spielberg also paints with deep primary colors here to create an oversaturated, old-school cinematic look where even the skies are designed to evoke a deep emotional response: consider the end scene where the sky is awash in rich reds and oranges, and think about how strong the chromatic resonance is in other scenes, where beautiful greens and blues stand out. This look is meant to harken back to that classic Technicolor canvas of the 1930s, 40s and 50s.

•        Spielberg is clearly channeling the works of John Ford in War Horse; Ford was a master of big, broad natural landscapes that also prominently featured horses, often in westerns where the colors popped with vibrancy.

SPIELBERG HAS BEEN LABELED AN UNABASHEDLY MANIPULATIVE DIRECTOR OF MAINSTREAM MELODRAMAS. IS THIS A FAIR OR UNFAIR CRITIQUE?

•        Arguably, the aim of any quality film is to produce a strong emotional response in viewers and engage and entertain audiences. Spielberg’s films are consistently entertaining, engaging, and emotionally powerful. So, why should that be held against him just because his films are so popular and therefore mainstream, and just because the man himself is so overexposed in the media?

•        The artistry, craftsmanship and attention to detail in Spielberg movies is clearly evident and in strong supply. With few exceptions, the man is not painting by numbers or going through the motions. Most of his films are deeply personal on emotional levels, and you can tell he genuinely cares about the subject matter, settings and characters in his pictures. He brings a strong vision and a passionate commitment to every project he pursues.

•        When you consider how widely seen and immensely lucrative his films have been, Spielberg becomes an easy target for critics: after all, this is the man, along with George Lucas, who ushered in the era of the summer blockbuster with Jaws and forever changed the way movies were slated and marketed, many say for the worse. It’s not Spielberg’s fault that Hollywood—and modern audiences—prefers big budget, special-effects-laden action/adventure/thriller fare over the past 35 years. Why should it be held against Spielberg that he is a Hollywood insider who is given large budgets, hot property scripts and A-list actors, writers, composers and technicians to work with?

•        In this sense, Spielberg is like the New York Yankees: rich in payroll, loaded with talent, consistently winning and celebrated, and immensely popular, yet easy for critics and film historians/scholars to root against and dislike because of his clout, connections, power and privileges.

•        Additionally, what’s so bad about “melodrama”? Why is it such a bad word among critics? Why can’t films be sentimental, emotionally stirring and worthy of a good cry? If a new, young, unknown director was able to achieve Spielberg’s mastery of emotional manipulation in a feature film, he’d be praised for his talents.

WHAT THEMES DOES WAR HORSE DELVE INTO?

•        A wistfulness for a simpler bygone time, as well as the clash between the past and present, as exemplified in the battle sequences where contemporary tactics of warfare contrast with outdated ones—consider the tank that targets the trapped horse. We root for the beautiful horse, which symbolizes a time when warfare was less dehumanized and mechanized, yet it is no match for the machinery of modern war.

•        Loss of innocence—both Joey’s innocence and Albert’s. Both have to grow up and face fear and an uncertain future. The scarlet sky at the film’s conclusion, which is far from the deep, idealized blue skies of earlier scenes, is symbolic of the scars these two now have and the horrors they’ve been exposed to.

•        The underdog—hope in an improbable longshot who must defy the odds and survive hardship and trauma to be able to return to his original master.

•        The senselessness and war and how it exploits humans and animals alike to achieve its violent ends.

OTHER FILMS THAT WAR HORSE REMINDS US OF

•        National Velvet

•        Au Hasard Balthazar, a Robert Bresson picture that follows the life of a simple donkey in a cruel world

•        The Killing Fields, in how the two main protagonists—an American and an Asian—are separated by war and how the Asian must endure a horrific journey until he is reunited with his friend at the denouement.

•        Paths of Glory and All Quiet on the Western Front, two earlier features with World War I as the setting

OTHER MAJOR FILMS BY STEVEN SPIELBERG

•        Jaws

•        Close Encounters of the Third Kind

•        Raiders of the Lost Ark

•        E.T.

•        Jurassic Park

•        Schindler’s List

•        Saving Private Ryan

•        A.I.-Artificial Intelligence

•        Lincoln