en Kjrijch Peat
(guest posting)
(guest posting)
 |
| (c) Dreamworks, SKG, 2011. |
“War Horse” the Steven Spielberg film adapted from a young adult novel by Michael Morpurgo confounds the reviewer: it has sentiment without being sentimental; it shows an animal being heroic without stooping to supernatural or magic-realistic means, and it heeds the advice of every teacher of writing (whether of novels or movie scripts) to “show your theme; don’t tell it.”
Further, the movie (following the book in this instance – which my sister, a junior high librarian in Hutchinson, Kansas, says it does fairly well) uses the technique of novelist John Dos Passos to tell an overarching story in bits and pieces instead of a single narrative.
Using the horse, Joey, as a framing device, the story manages to show the civilians on both sides of WWI; both armies – officers and ordinary soldiers, the trench warfare on both sides; the devastation in the countryside; 19th Century military tactics (cavalry charges) vs 20th Century tactics (machine guns, poison gas, tanks). Joey the horse is not made to do anything impossible for a horse but is shown, analogous to people, to be able to rise to extraordinary heroism and friendship in time of deep stress.
