War Horse

War Horse is a wonderful throwback to a time when Hollywood was able to make sincere family films about important times without being accused of sugarcoating history or finding happy endings in tragic events.  True, this is not the greatest World War I film ever made, but there are far too few films about this war, and there is plenty of room for War Horse to stand among the handful of great ones we have--like 1930’s All Quite on the Western Front and 1943’s The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. 

Most Americans don’t know a single thing about the WWI or why The War to End All Wars didn’t.  War Horse isn’t exactly going to educate people about that conflict, but it does stir the imagination and inspire curiosity.  It is also a beautiful film that incorporates most of the good Spielberg characteristics and avoids most of the bad ones.  It is rare these days to see a film about an animal that doesn’t anthropomorphize it.  Rather than going down that silly road, Spielberg and screenwriters Lee Hall and Richard Curtis--like novelist Michael Morpurgo and playwright Nick Stafford--use the animal to connect various wartime chapters without making the film feel overly episodic. 

War Horse is an ideal narrative for Spielberg.  Like his 1987 adaptation of Empire of the Sun, it marries his two favorite types of films--the epic war story and the young boy trying to create family.  It is as compositionally striking and honestly sentimental as an early John Ford film.