Jeremy Irvine and costar in "War Horse." Image: DreamWorks.
Reader Julie Penshorn has some big problems with Steven Spielberg's "War Horse," and she should know. Penshorn is the owner and lead trainer and teacher at Sunborn Stables, just south of Chisago City, MN. She is a United States Dressage Federation certified teacher/trainer, and has worked with dressage and jumping horses for 35 years. After hearing a glowing review on National Public Radio and feeling disappointed by the film, she shares these thoughts:
The new Spielberg movie, "War Horse," started bad and got worse. Contrived, and appealing to childish ideals and dreams about what relationships among horses, and between horses and humans are like, the movie was a real disappointment. Worse, it was attended by almost a full house on Christmas Day, and the audience clapped at the end of it. I thought, "Brother, this is going to make my job as a horse trainer that much harder, as people expect magic, not logic and time-tested horsemanship techniques."
In the movie, the young horse is not handled until he is about three years old. Not likely in the setting in which that horse was born. Then, he is trained by a complete novice who talks to him in English and the horse learns everything he tries to teach him in a couple seconds. When the horse doesn't understand right away, the boy just talks to him in a more sentimental tone and he is suddenly trained. It's as if they didn't have one knowledgeable horse person on the set, and if they did, he or she was ignored. When the boy plowed the field with the horse and the plow split a huge boulder in half, I thought, "Why stop there? Why don't you just put a red cape on this horse!"
All the horse handling scenes are just that bad. Another of my favorites is the placing of the harness collar on the horse's head (this happens a couple times in the movie, and it's pathetic every time). You don't stand in front of a horse and shove a collar in his face. Of course he won't put his head in it!
The anthropomorphic relationship between the two horses is also painfully ridiculous. When one horse insists on being the one harnessed so his buddy can rest, . . . this is beyond anything an animal with a walnut sized brain can do.
I was alternately laughing at the poor direction and almost crying at the touching scenes, punctuated by the perfect music for effective heart-wrenching. The set direction and locations were quite impressive and the story had potential to be a great movie instead of the DVD rental it is.
On a positive note, the horse actor was really great. He was very well trained by someone who certainly didn't use the techniques shown in this movie! Maybe they should have consulted this person for advice on realism.
