So I saw War Horse over the New Year's weekend...and can I just say...most depressing movie ever...?
That doesn't seem to make much sense, I know and it's supposed to be this heartwarming tale about a horse and his boy but seriously...it was the most depressing movie I've seen in a while. I think it's because I don't usually watch "drama" type movies, preferring to stay with action/adventure/superhero/comedy (any fluff whatsoever). I'm not a big fan of the drama genre because I don't like watching stories about other people's messed up lives. We know life is messed up...why must I spend 10+ dollars and 2 hours of my time to just see it confirmed in cinematic form? If I see a movie, I want to escape reality...that's the point. Not see it thrown back in my face...
The trailer was really misleading...seriously.
Anyway, spoiler alert.
So it started out and it was all nice and peachy, and I was like "hey this is pretty good." It was all very coming of age and bonding between this horse and the boy and a lot of uplifting triumphs and all that and then...
The boy's family's farm's radish crop failed...and it was all downhill from there.
World War I broke out.
Then, the horse was sold to this captain played by Tom Hiddleston (I was very excited about him being in the movie. I think he's a great actor.) And then ten minutes later he DIES. So I was sort of heartbroken by the first 30 minutes of the movie. He was such a nice character and he was very kind to the boy and to the horse.
And then the horse gets captured and put in the care of these two really young German soldiers who are brothers, one of which is only 14 years old. The younger brother gets called to the front line while the older is ordered to stay behind and care for the horses. The older brother made a promise to their mother to take care of the younger sibling so he steals two horses, one of which is THE horse, and they desert the army in France, hiding out in a windmill. They get found and SHOT for deserting...so they die.
Then the horses get found by this French girl who's not very healthy and living with her grandpa. She's an orphan and when she finds the horses she keeps them because she wants to learn how to ride. The German army comes through and takes everything of value/foodstuffs from the grandpa's farm. So he lets her take her mother's saddle and ride up the hill...but on the other side there's the German army again who take the horses.
Now the horses are used to pull huge artillery to wherever they need to be. They're extremely heavy and look like modernized cannons which they are. They need a team of 8 horses to pull it up the mountain and the horses don't last very long at this job because it's very difficult to constantly haul these things, so a lot just fall down dead from overwork. The black horse gets injured and DIES...again...with the dying.
And the other horse, THE horse, runs away from the German army into no man's land and gets caught up in the wire.
You find out that the boy had joined the army by this time and is fighting in the general area. He goes with a friend from his village and the friend gets engulfed by gas and DIES.
And there's a heart warming scene about the British and German army putting aside their differences to free THE horse and the horse gets taken back to the camp and the boy proves that it's his horse by describing it even though he's blind at the time from the gas.
But he has to buy the horse back because it's getting put up for auction. But the french grandfather pays the highest bid because his granddaughter DIED during the war...
And that's the last death in the movie. But seriously.
I mean by that time, I didn't even care that the horse and the boy were together again and they were going to live happily ever after because seriously EVERYONE DIED. Except the horse. And the boy.
I know it's based in World War I and WWI was an especially difficult war, what with the trenchfoot and shellshock and high death tolls and all that. It is a war after all, but seriously...does everyone have to die? If I didn't know any better, I would say the horse is cursed.
And the ending scene where the horse and boy are riding home is shot very oddly. The color is oversaturated with reds and oranges because it's the sunset and you really only see the silhouettes of the people. It almost looks like that one scene in Gone with the Wind where Scarlet O'Hara is telling the sky, "I'll never go hungry again". It jarred me out of the movie because none of the other parts were filmed that way. Was it supposed to be like a nostalgic thing? Like a throwback to Gone with the Wind? Or was he trying to say something about how the audience doesn't get to see this homecoming because it's too personal so he's shutting us out? Or what...?
So I do not really recommend the movie unless you want to be depressed when you get out of the theater.
The whole rest of the night, I just kept announcing, "I'm so depressed!" like Marvin from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy...because I was!
No bueno.
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