War Horse

The problem with War Horse is right there in the title. It isn't Person in a War who Owns a Horse or People, War, and Horses. It's War Horse. It is, quite literally, a movie about a horse which finds itself in a war - WWI, to be precise.

The problem is that horses lack moral agency. They can't grow.  They can't choose to become better horses. They can only react to their experiences. Consequently, they make for lousy cinematic protagonists. In this film, the horse passes from owner to owner, from Englishman to German to Frenchman and back again, but so what? We don't spend enough time with the various owners to invest in them and it's impossible to invest deeply in a horse.

So that leaves us watching the film as a technical exercise. Oh, it's horrible. The zoom-in after zoom-in on the faces of various players while saccharine-sweet orchestral music swells and swells and swells. The compositions and set pieces that recall a technicolor version of How Green Was My Valley, had that movie been nigh-unendurable. The screenplay that sets up one overblown cliffhanger after another for a horse that is, in the end, just a horse.

Unquestionably, Steven Spielberg ranks among the finest American film makers. Even the best, however, can fail occasionally. War Horse represents such a failure. I just don't know if it's possible to make a compelling film about a creature that lacks self-awareness.

Sherlock Holmes

I never believed that Robert Downey, Jr. was Sherlock Holmes. I never believed that Jude Law was Dr. Watson. I never believed that Rachel McAdams was anyone other than Rachel McAdams. I never believed. I never believed. I never believed.

Perhaps the movie was spoiled by the previews that came before it. Seeing Robert Downey, Jr. doing his shtick as Iron Man made me realize that the guy’s been playing the same character since the superlative KISS KISS BANG BANG. By the time he came onscreen in the feature, I was already done with him.

Perhaps it was spoiled by its seeming love for Victorian London, surely one of the most depressing combinations of city and era in history. As the film went from one CGI vista to the next, I sensed that it was trying to wow me, or at least draw me in. Instead, I merely thought, “The English exploited the world merely to fund that $#!^hole?”

Perhaps its casting choices killed it. McAdams is roughly ten years too young to be her character. Mark Strong, as the villain, is so much better than everyone else that he made me wonder why he isn’t starring in major motion pictures. And the leads, well, they are who they are and they play who they are.

Then again, the problem may have been the story. There’s all this business about an ominous raven, which we know (since this is a Holmes story) is just so much jerking us around. The pièce de résistance of the villain’s evil scheme is to bring the US back into the empire. Oh, the horror! Soccer! Fish and chips! “Spaced,” “Fawlty Towers,” and “Walking with Prehistoric Beasts”! Give me a break. By the time the movie gets around to flat-out ripping off The Da Vinci Code, I was through.

My wife, on the other hand, enjoyed the heck out of it.  Then again, she'd happily watch Robert Downey, Jr. fold socks, so your mileage may vary. I wanted to like SHERLOCK HOLMES. I was ready to invest in SHERLOCK HOLMES. But I just couldn’t suspend my disbelief.

Happy-Go-Lucky

Here’s a review of a film that happened while I was writing it. I opened a blank page thinking that I knew what I was going to set down, but once the writing process forced me to give HAPPY-GO-LUCKY serious consideration, the film grew and turned into something quite remarkable. I liked HAPPY-GO-LUCKY when the credits rolled. Now that I’ve thought it over a bit, I see it as a laudable achievement.

Poppy (Sally Hawkins) is one of those people who chooses happiness. She’s quick with a smile and a laugh and a silly quip, and she borders on irrepressible. She’s so relentless that, for a while there, I thought there was something wrong with her. If there weren’t more to Poppy than meets the eye, HAPPY-GO-LUCKY wouldn’t be much of a movie. In revealing her, however, the film doesn’t go where I thought it would: into an inner world of pain or sorrow. Rather, the film does something marvelous: it explores the depths of her goodness and the reach of her will to happiness.

Think about that for a minute. Think about the difficulty of the art of joy. How many films focus on desperation, or revenge, or depression, or greed, or fear, or any one of the myriad traps we may encounter on our lives’ paths? How many filmmakers (and audiences, for that matter) confuse darkness with maturity, desolation with wisdom?

Depression is easy. Anyone can write the blues.

But happinesss, real happiness, is hard. It’s hard to live and it’s especially hard to create in film. In HAPPY-GO-LUCKY, Mike Leigh doesn’t give us an idiot or a stunted human being (though we can see how some may regard her as such). Rather, he gives us a woman who sees the world as it is and responds to it with an almost Christlike compassion and love. He does this through a barely perceptible dramatic arc, inviting us simply to spend time with Poppy and her friends, to observe her and those whom she touches. He puts Poppy in a world of bright, inviting colors, surrounds her with cheerful music, gives her real conversations with real people, and watches her try to find what joy there is to be found. Poppy doesn’t always succeed, and she may occasionally have to walk away. But that’s life. The point is, Poppy gets it. How often do we see that?

Mike Leigh has created a wonderful film here. If you haven’t yet seen it, give it a spin. You’ll be happy that you did.