War Horse

                                                                         Movie review
                                                                 
                                                                    TITLE:  War Horse
                                                                    RATED:  PG-13, (2011)    
                                                                    STARRING: Jeremy Irvine
                                                                    DIRECTOR: Steven Spielberg
                                                                    REVIEWER:  Andy Buwalda

There are probably a number of well-known horses in our collective memory. Most recently, if you were asked, you might recall Secretariat, or Northern Dancer… both great race horses… the first one, American and the other, Canadian. (Northern Dancer, incidentally, is buried in Oshawa at Windfield Farms). Or you might call to mind the movie cowboy Roy Roger’s horse, Trigger, now stuffed and mounted in a California museum. Or you may think of that classic children’s story Black Beauty written by Anna Sewell. War Horse is that story… the story of Black Beauty gone to war… except that he is brown – not black.

But this movie, produced and directed by Steven Spielberg, is no children’s story. The war scenes (first WW) are credible, the horses are all magnificent and beautiful, and the acting, superb.  If I were to describe it in a sentenced or two, I would say it’s an action movie on the one hand and a chick-flick on the other… both aspects skillfully blended together.  We don’t really know what lives in a horse… we need humans to make a horse story human… and so we have the lead character Albert ‘coming of age’ and a host of others interacting with the horse. What are you to do when the lead is a horse? Still...it’s amazing how much expression can be found in a horse’s face… another credit to Spielberg’s skill.

Here is what one film credit said about the movie: “War Horse is based on a children's novel by author Michael Morpurgo, set during the first world war and a stage play of the same name, chronicling the trials and tribulations of a young soldier (the horse) who serves on both sides (England and Germany) before finding himself alone in no man's land.”

This is the story of a horse with a big heart… and has its own scene of men laying down their guns in “no man’s land” (recall the WWI  ceasefire known as The Christmas Truce where the two sides agreed to quit fighting, played a game of soccer, then go back to fighting on Christmas Day).  It may be taking the analogy to far and may even seem sacrilegious to some but the horse in this scene in 'no man's land' comes across as a Christ figure, at least it did to my mind. A great movie to begin the New Year.