War Horse

Out from the world of holidays and back in to the world of real life and, of course, blogging.  I apologize for the copypaste filler, but that song always cracks me up, and I couldn't resist.  But you want to hear about my holidays!  Of course you do.  Well, beyond spending time with family, and wishing I wasn’t spending time with family, and spending altogether not enough time with love, I got around to watching a film.  The film was War Horse, and because of its heartfelt content and philosophical merit that is relevant to this blog, I am going to do a second film review.

Actually, it’s not really a review, but an analysis, so for those who haven’t seen the film, plan on seeing the film, and look forward to seeing the film without having me tell you everything that happens in the film, skip this post for your sake.  Don’t worry, there will be a new one next week.

For those who enjoyed the film just fine without imagining the extent to which its iconic relationship might go… don’t you worry either; I won’t make it creepy.  For me, the relationship between Joey the horse and Albert the boy and young man was only a small part of the film: the initial development and the goal, giving it a beautiful circularity.  I’m not much of a horse fan – they always made me nervous as a child and I never learned to ride beyond the basics – but nevertheless I found the one-to-one relationship portrayed in the beginning of the film between the titular character and his first owner to have gorgeosity in equality that isn’t often portrayed in film.  Albert leads the way, figuratively, but unlike any other horse master he waits for Joey to follow.  He doesn’t command, he suggests, and what’s more he provides an example, bringing himself completely to the level of the horse even to the point of wearing a yoke.  It’s interesting to note that this ultimate action of leveling saves Joey’s life later in the film.  In short, this relationship, the film’s place of growth and eventually its paradise, is also what I feel to be the ideal in the real world: equality in day-to-day life between humans and animals, and genuine caring between the two.

Far from being some New Age notion, though, or a PETA-esque proclamation that animals are no different from humans, the film goes on to show that it is possible to have this love and equality, or at least to understand and value it, even in the inherently negative context of war, which Joey is thrown into as the steed of one Captain Nicholls.  The man dies; the horse lives on to be found in the clutches of other men who, unlike the two he has been close with, regard him as without value.  Only two German boys – boys that, although being in the forces, value the war as little as their superiors value Joey – save him by suggesting he may be put to work behind the lines, before escaping with him and a second steed.  Once again, men die, but Joey survives.  It isn’t that they died for him, but that he was rescued by them but was unable to protect them, both in the case of the captain and that of the traitors.  It sets a depressing tone for the future.

This future is realized in a sickly French girl, who takes a great shine to both the horses.  On her birthday, against the preference of her grandfather, she is allowed to ride Joey – and unfortunately in doing so winds up in the middle of a German camp.  This time, the horses are taken, and as though in determination to prevent what had happened to their last two riders, they go without a struggle as the girl returns to her grandfather. 

The message of caring human-animal relationships, though, wouldn’t be as strong without its inverse: a challenge brought about as the horses are set to haul artillery, without care for their health beyond that they continue to pull, and that their corpses don’t impede the others after they are shot once they’re no longer useful.  It is here that Joey’s life is most perilous, and it is also here in the film where Albert is reintroduced as a nervous combatant – for both, the farm at which they had grown together has become a lost heaven.  This peril is also amplified at roughly the same time for both: Joey’s equine companion up until this point is killed upon collapsing in pulling the artillery, while Albert is temporarily blinded by a gas attack.  The general image is of fear, and a desire to return, embodied in Joey’s fleeing through no-man’s land, only to be caught in the barbed wire littering it.

This is the climax, and is highly symbolic: the horse is caught in a divide, an intentional divide between two sides that fight and believe themselves intrinsically different despite the similarities we have been shown in the film, having been privy to the lives of both the English and the Germans.  We have been shown another pointless and terrible divide, however: the divide between animals and humans, and we have been shown that the ideal for this as well is for the divide to be removed.  And, lo and behold, at this very time in the film, both divides are removed at once, in more than one way: the wires are cut, weakening the divide between both sides of the war, and they are cut by the combined activity of an Englishman and a German.  Naturally, Joey is then free and is soon reunited with his likewise-injured friend.  Oh, and if you didn't quite catch it the first time, the war ends.

This is a very powerful metaphor, I feel, that can be interpreted in many different fashions depending on whether your focus is upon the morality of war or upon animal-human relations, but it always leads to the same: the divisions in question are foolish and destructive, and only in the interest of a happy ending is the destruction reversed, albeit doubtless not without scars.  It’s this, and its believability on the parts of all characters, whether good or antagonistic, that I feel makes the film such a phenomenal one, and though it was released some time ago and I’m sure its time in the theatres is nearly done, I hope that it does well, because these messages are clear even without a great deal of thought on the part of the audience.  Media changes minds.