War has taken everything from everyone.  That is an oft spoken phrase in Steven Spielberg’s latest film, War Horse, which shows the universal suffering of war through the viewpoint of the horse – the suffering for both man and beast, and the people both in the front lines and far removed from the action.  The film is well done, but it doesn’t bring much else to the table other than saying that war sucks.  And it does get a bit too sappy at times. 

The film stars Jeremy Irvine as Albert Narracott, a farm boy who obtains a beautiful horse and trains it, only to have it sold to the English cavalry and shipped to France to fight on the front lines of World War I.  The film follows that horse and its many owners, including the benevolent British Captain Nicholls (Tom Hiddleston of Thor), sweet French girl Emilie (Celine Buckens), and various compassionate Germans no one cares about, from the beginning of the Great War in 1914, until its end in 1918.  Emily Watson plays Albert's mother, and unfortunately she isn't in it nearly enough.

At its best, War Horse is breathtaking and captivating, in both content and cinematography.  At its worst, however, it’s just too sentimental, too mushy, just plain mawkish.  The film has heart, no doubt, but it’s a big, bleeding heart filled with tons and tons of tear-soaked dollars.  In other words, it can be sentimental for sentimental’s sake.

Let me say first that the cinematography is awesome. It shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows Spielberg’s go-to cinematographer, Janusz Kaminski, who did the cinematography for Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan and, perhaps the most celebrated film of all time (though not a Spielberg film), Little Giants (1994), starring the incomparable Rick Moranis.  John Williams' score is also fine, but, unfortunately, it adds even more to the film’s relentless sappiness.

One of the film’s unique qualities is the way in which it tackles the theme of competition.  Specifically competition among men that stems from stubbornness, arrogance and all the other poor personality traits that cause men to wage battle against opponents with blatant disregard for their own safety and the safety of others.  I’ve never read Michael Morpurgo’s 1982 children’s novel the film is based on, or seen the stage adaptation, so I don’t know if competition is a theme in those works.  But Spielberg seems to bring the concept to the forefront.

For instance, the movie begins with a bidding war between a poor farmer, who can barely afford rent, and his landlord on the soon-to-be war horse.  The farmer wins, but nearly loses his farm.  Later, Albert races his nemesis David Lyons on that same future war horse, only to be thrown to the ground, while attempting to jump a wall.  Following are more pissing contests that end in pain and suffering for the instigators and the poor, innocent saps caught in the fray.  The greatest of those pissing contests being war. 

I don’t mean – and, assuredly, Spielberg didn’t mean – to simplify war as merely a “pissing contest.”  The message is that the innocent creatures – whether animals, women, children, young men, etc. – are all punished by powers beyond their control.  Powers that seek glory and/or rule.  Thus, the horse is the perfect character to place at the center of the film.  It is so innocent, so dependent on its owners, literally led around by the neck, that it becomes symbolic of how we are all led into battle against our wills.

Now for the sentimentality. Ready for a half-assed lesson in literature and film criticism?  No?  Good.  Here it is.  A criticism of sentimentality is that the artist uses it solely for cheap tears – i.e. killing a dog or child for no reason – and the audience feels it doesn’t earn those tears, as they were never emotionally invested in the story.  In a barely articulate, poorly written nutshell, that’s it.  At times, War Horse suffers from that sentimentality.  It’s just one heartache after another.  People who possess emotions and feelings – and all those other useless human qualities that threaten to emasculate me should I express them while sober – could actually spend the entire movie with a lump in their throats.  I didn’t, of course.  I was too busy drinking and beating up people in the aisle.

However, the poor bastards behind me in the theater were weeping in earnest throughout nearly the entire film.  At one point, when yet another shitty thing happened to the poor fucking horse toward the end of the film, I heard one of them mutter “Jesus Christ.”  The film does relentlessly tug on your heartstrings, a little too much at times, but there is actually a deeper meaning in that relentlessness: war is relentless.  The film unfolds much like the Great War, or any war does for that matter.  When you think you’ve earned a victory, devastation comes to sweep you violently off your feet.  I use violently, because the film definitely doesn’t shy away from the depictions of war.  It’s not as gory as Saving Private Ryan, but it has some vicious battle scenes.  (Another flaw with the film is that is seems uneven in its youthful tone – as it’s based on a children’s book – and its violent, depressing depictions of war.)

It’s hard to say definitely if the sentimentality overbearing, because all those tear-jerking moments – and there are about 3,394,328 of them – bring it all back to the message of the film in some way. 

And anyway, it’s hard not to fall into a pit of sap when a horse is at the film’s center. It’s an intelligent and elegant animal that evokes sympathy in anyone and everyone, both the characters in the film and the audience.  Thus, no matter what you do with War Horse, emotions are going to run high.  More importantly, the horse isn’t just an object like the piece of cloth that travels with it. It’s a character, with fears, courage, loyalty, etc.  In a way, the horse is almost how we see ourselves.

Spielberg certainly hates the shit out of war and he loves the shit out of innocent things.  We’ve seen that in a few of his previous films about war, such as Schindler’s List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998), and the abuse and oppression of innocents, such as his 1975 movie Jaws, where the villainous sheriff and his bloodthirsty men hunted down and killed that blameless, malnourished shark that was just trying to survive.  Or Amistad or something.

War Horse is another of Spielberg’s anti-war, pro-innocent flicks (much like all war movies are), but it’s a bit repetitive and just seems too contrived for the director.  Compare it to another of the director’s war movies, Saving Private Ryan, where the tragic moments weigh on you like profound despair, because you were so thoroughly invested.  It succeeds where War Horse fails, because those moments are well executed, and well earned, and you ball your eyes out, overcome with the immense tragedy of the situation.  Not me, however.  I was too busy drinking and beating up people in the aisle.