War Horse (2011)

Of this year's bloated list of nine Best Picture nominees, it took me the longest to bring myself to watch "War Horse," largely due to its reputation as "the kind of movie that used to win Oscars," in addition to it's two-and-a-half-hour running time and all that I've read about John Williams' overbearing score. And there's a part of me that feels sad about slighting a new Spielberg film, something serious movie-goers should always have a right to look forward to.

Indeed, "War Horse" displays the best of what Spielberg films are capable of. The World War I battle sequences in the European countrysides are every bit as deft and meticulously recreated as those in previous Spielberg war films. One gets the sense that the man could reenact any battle from any war at this point and make you forget that it isn't live footage from the scene itself. And the film's powerful emotional core is as affecting as the best of any of Speilberg's family-oriented pictures.

I suspect that for some, "War Horse" plays like a "Spielberg's greatest hits" movie, and I can understand being critical of Spielberg for making a film that is altogether within his wheelhouse in a year when one of his few contemporaries, Martin Scorsese, experimented with a new genre to him (the children's film) and a never-before-used format (3-D). Throw in a little-known French director's silent, black-and-white film and Terrence Malick's format-busting visual poetry, and it's hard not to feel like Spielberg was just going through the motions when he made this film.

It would be tempting to feel that way, and I did laugh to myself when reading Claudia Puig's review of "War Horse" in USA Today, where she wrote that "at times, it's hard not to escape the sense that we're watching 'Saving Private Ryan'-meets-'The Black Stallion.'" I get that.

But what I also got from "War Horse" was a director paying loving tribute to one of his idols, John Ford. I saw a lot of "The Searchers" in the saturated blue skies of the film's opening half-hour, and a blue-tinted, background-lit scene toward the end of the film when a soldier attempts to rescue the horse from some barbed wire has a look similar to the scene in "The Searchers" when Ethan Edwards and his party are slowly moving through a swamp area on the trail of his family's Comanche killers.

Spielberg and his cinematographer, the venerable Janusz Kaminski, deliver a film of stunning visual power. Were it not for "The Tree of Life," I'd say this was the best cinematography of the year. Frequently dominated by operatic long shots, "War Horse" looks majestic.

By now, I've usually recapped the plot, but for a movie that is among the longest nominated this year, the plot is as simple as one would expect from a children's story. A country boy named Albert (Jeremy Irvine) falls in love with a horse his father has payed too much for. His mother (the great Emily Watson, who I wish the film could have used more of), is furious; the horse cannot be tamed and is of no help to the family's crop-tending. But Albert trains him.

As the first World War makes its way across the English countryside, the British Cavalry purchase the horse (named Joey) for use in the war. The soldier who takes him away from Albert promises to take good care of Joey and return him if possible after the war, and because we know Spielberg's films, we know two things: 1) returning the horse will be damn near impossible, and 2) the horse will be reunited with his owner by the end.

Along the way, Joey's bridle is in the hands of a variety of owners, most of them soldiers, but not all of them. In fact, one of the film's most moving sub-plots involves a young girl who comes into possession of Joey for a time, and the grandfather who cares for her.

The actors, while all effective, are very clearly secondary in this film, and Spielberg unashamedly makes the horse the film's main character. For some, this could be a problem. But Spielberg has done this before. Think "ET" and "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence." He knows what he's doing.

I knew going in to "War Horse" that it was thought to be the work of a coasting director. I knew that the sentimentality of the film, based on a Tony Award-winning play, would be amped-up to 11 on the make-you-cry scale. I feel like I knew every bad thing about this movie before I saw it.

But why, then, was I so moved by "War Horse"? Why was I more emotional over this film than when watching "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close"? Why is it that I began the film in a jaded mindset and left it with a completely different point of view? I can only surmise that the film was effective. That's a simple answer, but it runs deep. If the measure of a good movie is how well it accomplishes what it sets out to accomplish, then "War Horse" is a good movie. And if Spielberg is just retreading themes and visuals that he's done to death already, then what makes him that different from someone like Hitchcock, who constantly explored similar themes within the same genre (and brilliantly so) for his entire career?

The final 40 minutes of "War Horse" is some of the most affecting film making I've seen all year. Yes, it's exactly what anyone would expect from Spielberg. No, it's not groundbreaking or original in any way. But dammit, that closing shot with the actors silhouetted against a John Ford-inspired, burnt orange sky... It just works.

3.5 out of 4