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
Read more...
Posts
