WAR HORSE

What has been missing from the awards season in recent years has been the sweeping epic that is not only a critical success and emotional powerhouse, but also a box office hit, think ‘Lord of the Rings’ and ‘Gladiator’.  And while the box office hit aspect is yet to be determined (not looking incredibly promising however), this season’s grandiose against-all-odds tearjerker is found in Steven Spielberg’s ‘War Horse’.  Spielberg’s second film to open this December (the first being ‘The Adventures of Tintin’) marks a return to his roots of classic nostalgia filmmaking.  What many critics have been saying is ‘E.T.’ meets ‘Saving Private Ryan’, less the buckets of blood.

This film is truly an epic in every sense of the word.  The story begins with the friendship forged between a boy, Albert (Jeremy Irvine), and his horse Joey.  After Albert’s father buys Joey at auction to be a plow horse for his crops, a very undersized horse for the job, it is up to Albert to train Joey to help salvage the family farm.  Following the unimaginable success Albert and Joey have at plowing the field, some days after the crops have started growing a storm wipes them out and Albert’s father is forced to sell Joey to an English WWI captain.  Albert catches Joey just in time to tell him he will find him no matter what and they will be together again.  Joey is looked after by the captain but after an early battle is seized by German soldiers.  From there Joey is rescued by two adolescent German soldiers and left in the care of a young girl on the French countryside, then recaptured by German soldiers, all while Albert enlists in the English army to find him.  The emotional journey concludes in No Man’s Land between English and German trenches, where the fate of Joey is determined by the flip of a coin.

At the Globes ‘War Horse’ suffered a similar fate as ‘Dragon Tattoo’, nominated for Best Picture Drama and Score, but nothing else (Spielberg being the obvious snub).  As stated previously this could be due in large part because the film wasn’t release until after the HFPA announced their nominations.  There are two things ‘War Horse’ has going for it that ‘Dragon Tattoo’ does not; ‘War Horse’ isn’t intended to be a “actor’s film” so it won’t suffer from lack of nominations there (probably won’t have any acting noms at the Oscars either) and what it should do well in, some art/technical categories (cinematography, costume), are not included in the Globes.  These aspects coupled with the fact it is being talked about in greater volume in Oscar circles should make for a better showing with The Academy.  The only category ‘War Horse’ will have to worry about heading to the Oscars will be Best Director.  Again, sounding like a broken record now, Fincher suffered the same fate and somehow Clooney was nominated for directing for ‘Ides of March’.  I expect Spielberg to supplant Clooney in the Oscar race and if Fincher has a chance he’ll have to knock Woody Allen or Marty Scorsese off the list, not an easy task.  It should be interesting to see what happens with ‘War Horse’ in a few weeks when the Oscar nominations come out but I believe it has been tragically underappreciated so far and hope that changes.  If it was my choice Best Picture would be a two horse race, no pun intended, between ‘The Artist’ and ‘War Horse’ rather than the overhyped ‘The Descendants’.   

Oscar Chances:

Best Picture: Lock

Best Director (Spielberg): Lock

Best Screenplay: Lock

Best Cinematography: Lock

Best Editing: Lock

Best Sound Editing and Mixing: Highly Likely

Best Costume Design: Lock

Best Art Direction: Lock

Best Score: Lock

Best Make Up: Possible