Directed by:
Steven SpielbergCinematography:
Janusz KaminskiComposer:
John WilliamsCast:
Jeremy Irvine, David Thewlis, Emily Watson, Tom Hiddleston, David Kross, Benedict Cumberbatch, Peter Mullan, Niels Arestrup, Patrick Kennedy, Nicolas Bro (more)VOD (3)
Plots(1)
Follows a young man named Albert and his horse, Joey, and how their bond is broken when Joey is sold to the cavalry and sent to the trenches of World War One. Despite being too young to enlist, Albert heads to France to save his friend. (official distributor synopsis)
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Reviews (12)
Steven Spielberg in the saddle! Still. And this time, literally. He holds the reins tight and... All right, I'll drop the horse analogies. Unfortunately, with War Horse, it's as I thought it would be. Many viewers were probably expecting a war battle sequence with non-stop action, a camera dirty with mud and blood, piles of dead... And they didn't know that Spielberg was adapting a book for slightly older children. So this is absolutely (in the best sense of the word) an ideal substance for him. He brought it to the screen with everything he had, and if the film deviates from Morpurgo's text, it's only for the best (the book, for example, is written in the first person and narrated by a horse, which also means that we don't see any battle scenes like the incredibly gripping trench battle Albert experiences in the film). That the Dartmoor scenes are pastel and kitsch to the point of shame? Yet their contrast with the war scenes stands out all the more. That Albert and Joey's intimate relationship makes anyone laugh? Haven't you ever had an animal and talked to them for hours? Isn't what many people call "zoophilia light" called friendship? And that's what War Horse is all about. It's an ode to friendship. The friendship of people with people, people with horses and horses with horses. When one sees how soldiers in different uniforms take care of horses with exactly the same love, one cannot even mind that the English, Germans and French do not speak their own languages, but English to a man... After all, they are all the same people, pitted against each other by a few powerful bastards who one morning wanted to start a war. There are a number of powerful and memorable scenes in the film (both the "light-hearted" ones, such as the ploughing or the car race, and the "warlike" ones, especially the cavalry charge, the windmill and the top sequence with the horse running through the raging "no-man's land" and culminating in the cutting of the wires) and I had no choice but to watch them contentedly, listen to the divine John Williams as I like him best, be moved now and then and clap my hands in spirit. I didn't know the runtime beforehand, but I honestly wouldn't have guessed that the whole adventure lasted 150 minutes. It passed so quickly and was so beautifully warm in the end.
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At times a colorful children's book, at times the hell of war, and at times an odyssey. Steven Spielberg, with somewhat of a sure bet, knows how to surprise you, and although the thoroughness or interconnectedness of the individual episodes sometimes stumbled heavily, I still have to nod approvingly despite my slight reservations. Considering how grandiose and, unfortunately, slightly prolonged the film War Horse feels as a result, it probably couldn't have been aimed more precisely. There are too many characters and moods here, and the plot either needed to be shortened by a third or stretched by an hour. The positive resonance resounds the loudest thanks to John Williams' amazing main theme and a few touching moments, against which there can be no defense.
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This is a pretty special movie for me and I must say that I really enjoyed it. Spielberg filmed this in his own way and it ended up so that every scene looks like a poster. Some scenes stand out incredibly. The ride through the battlefield is the most powerful scene of the movie, thanks to John Williams’ music too. Sometimes maybe half of the good feeling from the movie comes from the somebody sitting next to you.
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War Horse follows in the footsteps of The Red Baron and the Flyboys. A wave of renewed interest in WW1 would be a great thing, it would just have to be based on films that aren't such failures. The memory of Düsseldorf will be more eternal and colorful than a sunset in all shades of orange.
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A nostalgic look back to the heartiest, most melodramatic stage of cinematography. Film poetry for people who remember those times, maybe the last of its kind. Had it been twenty minutes shorter, it would have been one of Steven Spielberg’s best movies. That it’s one of his most personal films can be felt from every scene.
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