War Horse

It’s a perfect marriage, really – Spielberg, perfectly poised for a comeback on the back of a film from JJ Abrams that was basically a tribute to him, adapts book and West End play War Horse for the screen, minus big puppets but plus real horses and gorgeous scenery. The subject matter of warfare recalls his superb Schindler’s List and memorable Saving Private Ryan, while the unabashedly sentimental story of a horse surviving against all odds nods back to his work for children.

I found this an enjoyable film, and with some real beauty, but not one I’d watch again any time soon, and one that could have been rather more affecting without some of its sillier moments. The plot is that a drunken old farmer risks everything buying a beautiful thoroughbred horse, mostly as a snub to his landlord. His son, who had seen the horse before and become rather taken with it, takes responsibility for training it up and it surprises everyone by adapting to being used as a workhorse. The farmer’s luck remains dismal, though, and a storm ruins the crops, so much to the son’s distress, the father sells the horse – WWI is breaking out and the cavalry need horses. So Joey the Horse goes off to war. On horseback, his new rider faces death and has a very fanciful vision of the horse living through the rest of the war and changing hands several times before finding a happy ending. Well, that’s not actually what happens, but it seems to me the most rational explanation for what actually unfolds: Joey is taken by the Germans, but lost again when two deserters are shot, then spends a while in a fairytale jam-making mill with a sassy little French girl. He is taken again by the Germans, though, and made to pull heavy artillery, which will kill even workhorses in a matter of weeks. However, he survives like this well over three years, at which point he gets free of the Germans as they retreat – presumably to the Hindenburg Line – faces down a tank that for whatever reason is driven by men who think chasing horses is a good plan, runs across No-Man’s land in a tangle of barbed wire, and lays there until he can be rescued, touchingly by soldiers from each side working together. And then the real unlikely coincidences begin.

It’s very mawkish and unlikely, but frankly, if you come to the film expecting anything different, I’d consider you a little uninformed. It’s after all about a horse surviving not just a few battles in the Great War, but its entirety, on both sides. If you simply accept that it’s a sweet fairy story set in the most dismal of worlds, you can enjoy this story, even if like me it’s your area of particular interest and study. And the fanciful character of the filmmaking only enhances it. No, a village in Devon shouldn’t be so often beautiful rolling hills and glorious skies and streets that are very obviously actually in the Cotswolds, but that’s all part of a romantic image of Britain at the time that is rather nice – and makes me feel lucky that my early childhood was in a picturesque part of the countryside. No, it doesn’t make a terrible amount of sense that three years’ crippling labour are glossed over, but it allows for the big resolution of the Armistice and what comes after. It doesn’t matter that the operations on the Somme in 1918 (which lest we forget was the battleground after years of hard struggle – the iconic Battle of the Somme was in 1916, the Germans then fell back to the Hindenburg Line, pushed the Allies back again and then finally retreated again and were overrun in 1918 with the Hundred Days Offensive) largely seem to involve running across a small bit of No-Man’s land and occupying empty but booby-trapped trenches. This isn’t a film to go to for great believability or accuracy – it’s simply a nice story about a horse in a sad time in human history.

For that reason, I consider it a decent film, but not one that I felt was a great weepy or worth multiple viewings. Nor do I feel any great need to see the play, which I always felt I should have gone to before now. Better stories have been told about WWI, most of them true. On the other hand, while it’s WWII films Spielberg is known for, especially ones that reflect upon The Holocaust, it is WWI that moves me the most, and this story is a fascinating addition to its mythos.