Film Review | War Horse

There is a long, breathless sequence towards the end of Steven Spielberg’s new film War Horse, when the horse, its protagonist, runs amok across a landscape torn by World War I. He gallops over remains of ammunition and dead soldiers. The skies bombard unsophisticated firearms. The sequences spans from twilight to night. The horse, Joey, is injured by wires and shards. But he keeps running until a mesh of barbed wire covers his body and immobilizes him. Besides the agony depicted in it, the sequence brings out very literally how war can coerce the innocent into its fold. The horse’s fall is a painful moment to watch.

There are some moments of vintage Spielberg in War Horse. A crimson sky in the English countryside, a woman in her garden and a galloping horse in the horizon. Despite the post-production hyper-colouration, this scene is again a 35mm delight.

Without the technical wizardry of the director and his cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, War Horse would be a disaster. The story is sentimental, naïve and mediocre. Layers of soppiness are lathered on to a raging war involving nations. War is shown in its panoramic, tragic scale, discordant with the scope of the film—a thoroughbred’s journey through war and the victims of war, and his climactic, miraculous union with his owner, Albert, the son of an English farmer.

The performances of Emily Watson, who plays Albert’s mother, Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays a military chief, and Jeremy Irvine, who plays Albert, match the film’s one-dimensional pitch. There are no performances that tower over the film’s scale. In the end, it is neither a war film nor a film about a man and his animal.

At 2 hours, 26 minutes, War Horse is cinematic ambition without soul or mind. It can be tedious, if you don’t consider its digitally processed visual garnish a merit that can stand triumphantly on its own.

War Horse released in theatres on Friday.

sanjukta.s@livemint.com

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