Epics always produce a certain wariness in me: the usual earnestness of the plot, the sweeping cinematography calculated to be breathless, the performances calibrated for Oscar attention, the seriousness of it all… They all combine to make me dread the prospect of having to watch any of it — perhaps the same way most people become allergic to anything “required.” And so it goes. One had to see Steven Spielberg’s War Horse, an epic about a boy and his horse, because it has just been nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture. Based on the Tony-winning play of the same title, it goes Twenty Bucks on the horse-and-boy story, spinning a film set before and during the Great War. And yes, it is sweeping and earnest, clunky in places in that very attempt to be an Oscar movie reminiscent of Oscar movies of the 1980s — but it is ultimately engaging, and by God it skirts the predicable. For the most part, anyway. Jeremy Irvine as the boy who raises the horse manages to have gravity without suffering from the fact that the emotional center here is really the animal. That the film is really horse porn for little rich girls cannot be denied — but this is a good movie, nonetheless. Not a great one from a great director, but it is better than most of anything else from 2011. Does it deserve its Oscar nomination? Yes, it does.
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Epics always produce a certain wariness in me: the usual earnestness of the plot, the sweeping cinematography calculated to be breathless, the performances calibrated for Oscar attention, the seriousness of it all… They all combine to make me dread the prospect of having to watch any of it — perhaps the same way most people become allergic to anything “required.” And so it goes. One had to see Steven Spielberg’s War Horse, an epic about a boy and his horse, because it has just been nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture. Based on the Tony-winning play of the same title, it goes Twenty Bucks on the horse-and-boy story, spinning a film set before and during the Great War. And yes, it is sweeping and earnest, clunky in places in that very attempt to be an Oscar movie reminiscent of Oscar movies of the 1980s — but it is ultimately engaging, and by God it skirts the predicable. For the most part, anyway. Jeremy Irvine as the boy who raises the horse manages to have gravity without suffering from the fact that the emotional center here is really the animal. That the film is really horse porn for little rich girls cannot be denied — but this is a good movie, nonetheless. Not a great one from a great director, but it is better than most of anything else from 2011. Does it deserve its Oscar nomination? Yes, it does.