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Also showing in April: DIRECTOR Steven Spielberg CAST Jeremy Irvine, Emily Watson, David Thewlis, Benedict Cumberbatch Spielberg’s adaptation of Morpurgo’s beloved novel and the brilliant stage play is filmmaking on a grand scale. The story follows a horse and his farmboy owner from rural Devon to the horrors of the First World War. Great performances, fabulous scenery – bring a hanky. (2011 USA 146 minutes) AUDIO DESCRIPTION AVAILABLE - Please contact the cinema in advance This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Set against a sweeping canvas of rural England and Europe during the First World War, War Horse begins with the remarkable friendship between a horse named Joey and a young man called Albert, who tames and trains him. When they are forcefully parted, the film follows the extraordinary journey of the horse as he moves through the war, changing and inspiring the lives of all those he meets-British cavalry, German soldiers, and a French farmer and his granddaughter – before the story reaches its emotional climax in the heart of No Man's Land. The First World War is experienced through the journey of this horse-an odyssey of joy and sorrow, passionate friendship and high adventure. BBFC advice: Contains infrequent moderate battle violence Further Parental Advice “There’s a shot in Steven Spielberg’s War Horse that just might be the most Spielbergian thing the director has ever done. The scene is First World War-era occupied France, and a pair of German soldiers are about to be shot for desertion. The camera takes up position beside a windmill, the firing squad take aim — and at the crucial moment, one of the mill’s sails passes silently in front of the lens. We hear a crack, and a second later we see the bodies fall to the ground, but the blunt horror of the scene is hidden by the natural cut. All of the wrenching, sentimental impact of death, but none of the nasty mess: that’s vintage Spielberg. And what a pleasure it is to have him back. There’s been a twinkle missing from his recent work, perhaps most noticeably in his recent 3D, computer-generated Tintin adaptation. It felt like a mid-life crisis movie; the work of an old man fumbling with a younger generation’s toys. But War Horse pulls in the opposite direction. This is a soaring, sprawling epic that harks back to the dream-big visionaries of old Hollywood: John Ford, David Lean, David O. Selznick. It was shot on real film stock in the rolling English countryside and on huge, hand-built sets, with barely a pixel in sight. Spielberg’s regular director of photography, Janusz Kaminski, conjures up the romantic staginess of Ford’s horse operas with scenes of horses and riders on the crests of hills, backlit by impossibly saturated sunsets. It’s expansive, expensive, and long on both sincerity and running time. It’s also the best thing Spielberg has made in at least ten years. Although War Horse is billed as an adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s novel, screenwriters Lee Hall and Richard Curtis have undoubtedly taken a lot of cues from Nick Stafford’s savvy stage version: as in the play, thank goodness, there’s no sign of the horse getting a first-person voiceover. The story begins in an absurdly picturesque village in Devon, where tenant farmer Ted Narracott (Peter Mullan) buys a spirited young horse called Joey. Ted, a good-hearted man with a weakness for drink, is looking for an animal to pull his plough, but buys Joey to spite his tweedy landlord (David Thewlis), who also has his eye on the beast. Ted’s son Albert (Jeremy Irvine) vows to train Joey to take the plough and sets to work outside, determined to make his father proud, while his careworn mother (Emily Watson) knits and frets by the window. … Every part of War Horse riffs on a well-worn Spielbergian theme: our humanity isn’t what separates us from animals, it’s what draws us to them. As such, the film is spiritually closer to E.T., and maybe even Jurassic Park, than the director’s many other war movies. There’s also enough sentimentality sloshing around here to fill an Olympic swimming pool three times over, although it feels tonally appropriate. Criticise this too enthusiastically and you risk rubbishing by extension the great Golden Age films that were made in the same spirit: Gone With The Wind didn’t exactly rein in the schmaltz either. War Horse is no Gone With The Wind, but it’s still worth celebrating. This is filmmaking on a grand scale, bound by a grand vision, bolstered by grand performances and swept along by a grand old John Williams soundtrack. There’s not quite something for everyone, but the cynics can trot on: there’s something for everyone else.” read more UK RELEASE 13 January 2012 RUNNING TIME 146 minutes COUNTRY USA |
