When it comes to family films there aren’t many directors as well versed in the procedure than Steven Spielberg. After three years away from the director’s chair the self-confessed workaholic returned this year, first with animated adventure Tintin and now the silver screen adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s children’s story War Horse.
After a successful transition from the page to West End stage, the film version of War Horse combines two of Spielberg’s favourite indulgences, the visceral backdrop of war, and themes of childhood loss and alienation. Jeremy Irvine is the relative unknown actor charged with bringing Cornish farmer’s son Albert Narracott to the forefront of the story. Although not a performance blessed with subtlety, Irvine at least brings something of a sweet, loyal yet bullish teenage charm to the role.
The real star of the film though is Joey, the workhorse brought back to the Narracott farm by heavy drinking dad Ted, played by Peter Mullan - an actor fast becoming the go-to-guy for the alcoholic down and out – outbidding his devious landlord Lyons in a show of male pride at a local farmer’s auction.
Despite his son’s immediate bond with the four-legged acquisition, represented in a few slightly twee scenes of Albert training Joey to respond to his commands and a determined effort to get Joey to plough the family fields, Ted is left with no choice but pay his debts by selling Joey to the army on the breakout of the First World War.
As Joey is taken into a British cavalry division Spielberg’s War Horse, a slightly slow starter it must be said, really comes into its own. We follow Joey changing hands on both sides of the war’s front line. There are some great cameos, the highlight coming in the form of A Prophet’s Niels Arestrup, a French mill owner whose granddaughter stumbles upon Joey abandoned in a disused barn. War Horse is at its core a story of friendship and loss, the real emotional crux is not so much the quest for reconciliation between boy and horse but more the incredibly sad and futile machinations of war and decimation of young life that we’re pulled between by Joey, our silent bystander, almost representing prejudice-free viewpoint on the futility of war and all its emotional costs.
Spielberg is guilty of being a little too child-like in his direction at times, Joey’s equine friendship with a doomed German battery horse is one sickly example, but it has to be said that the veteran director swings the pendulum back in his favour again with a deeply emotive construction of the Battle of the Somme, the British army’s most bloody of campaigns.
Albert, only 17 at the outbreak of war and so heartbroken at the loss of his best friend enlists in the army in search of Joey. It is through Albert’s dangerous journey across no man’s land that we get echoes of Spielberg’s groundbreaking war epic Saving Private Ryan, and these scenes represent probably the only real test for the eye of an under 12 audience.
While War Horse probably won’t go down as one of Spielberg’s classics it’s certainly a film that will entertain all the family, a real Bank Holiday afternoon movie in the old tradition, and one that is both filmed and scored with real beauty.
3/5
Gareth Harding - Gareth is a 27 year old freelance writer based in the north-east of England. 'I have had a keen interest in all aspects of film and ...
