WAR HORSE

I have neither read Michael Morpurgo's children's novel nor seen the acclaimed National Theatre production of War Horse. I came to the material fresh, though wary of Steven Spielberg's attachment to it.  To my mind, Spielberg is a supremely flawed director, for whom story is subservient to sentiment.  His films are peopled with father-less children; heroic underdogs; and they have a quite risible tendency to refocus history on the few good acts rather than the wider evil. I find this inability to look bleak truth in the eye somehow insulting to those that lived through those times - a slippery fiction - and sadly, WAR HORSE is no exception.  For Spielberg has created a drama about a war in which millions died that continually cuts away from tragedy and focuses on sun-dappled scenes of goodness. It is emotional manipulation of the most vulgar kind, despicable, and dishonest. 

The story is meant to be one of the triumph of the underdog, and the triumph of love and loyalty.  Ted Narracott (Peter Mullan) is a poor farmer who buys a beautiful thoroughbred rather than a plough-horse to spite his landlord (David Thewlis) and palliate the pain of surviving the Boer War. His son Albert (Jeremy Irvine) turns "Joey" into a working horse against everyone's expectations, but the pony is requisitioned by Captain Nicholls (Tom Hiddleston) and taken to war.  As the cavalry is decimated by German mechanised units, the horse passes into the hands of a deserting German boy (David Kross, THE READER), then into the hands of a sweet French farm-girl and her grandfather (Niels Arestup) before being captured by the Germans to pull artillery.  It is thus fully a hundred minutes before our War Horse finally makes it to the front line, stranded in no-man's land, and cut free by a German and a Geordie (Toby Kebbell) in a scene clearly meant to evoke the common plight of the honest soldier. Finally, she is reunited with Albert, in an ending as endless as THE RETURN OF THE KING - first a reprieve from the doctor (Liam Cunningham), then a reprieve from an auction, and finally a ludicrously over-coloured reunion with mother (Emily Watson) and father back in Devon.  

This film is technically accomplished, particularly in its depiction of the front line. But its substance is confused and contradictory - the fault of Spielberg and his screenwriters Lee Hall (BILLY ELLIOT) and Richard Curtis (of all those awful fantasy-London films such as NOTTING HILL and LOVE ACTUALLY).   On the one hand, Spielberg wants us to sympathise with honest working folk - Ned Narracott and the Grandfather in France who bid in auctions against evil capitalist materialists.  Then again, he has an almost Downton-esque deference towards descent upper-class chaps who promise "man to man" to take care of horses.   No-one is really evil here.  Ned Narracott isn't really a feckless drunk.  Grand-pere isn't a coward but a principled pacifist. Even the German generals just have a job to do.  No-one is killed on screen. And of course, we never believe a major character is really in peril.

There are two scenes in this drawn-out farce that are worth a damn. The first is a scene where Major Jamie Stewart (Benedict Cumberbatch) - a gentleman cavalry officer of the old school - is unhorsed by a German artillery attack and mocked by his opposing officer. This moment - Major Stewart's resignation and realisation - sums up the tragedy and stupidity of the Great War. A generation that had been bred to gallantry - that should have learned from Crimea - finally had their illusions shattered by the first mechanised war.  The second scene is the depiction of going over the top at the Somme and the aerial pull-back showing body upon body impaled on barbed-wire wooden fences and trampled into the mud.  There is the horror of the war.  One doesn't need the deliberate emotional manipulation of a stranded horse to provoke the audience's pity.

WAR HORSE is on release in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, Singapore, Thailand, Brazil, Hong Kong, Israel, Ireland, Malta, Poland and Spain. It is released on the 19th January in Greece; on January 26th in Denmark, Kazakhstan, Russia, Slovenia, Estonia and Lithuania. It is released on February 2nd in Belgium, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Norway and Turkey; on February 9th in Argentina, Hungary and Romania; on February 17th in Germany and Italy; on February 23rd in France, Portugal, Finland and Sweden; and on  March 2nd in Japan. 

A PROPHET/UN PROPHET - Powerful, tense, exhilarating.

French writer-director Jacques Audiard's new film, UN PROPHET, is a devastatingly good film - even more searing than the already impressive 2005 flick THE BEAT THAT MY HEART SKIPPED. It's the kind of film that has you on the edge of your seat, wincing with unease throughout, and yet leaves you exhilarated and re-energised in your belief of what cinema, at its best, can be capable of.

The movie opens with a teenage kid being admitted to prison. Malik El Djebena is a zero. He has no politics, no religion, no friends, no ambition and no clue. Within ten minutes of the two and a half hour run-time his fate is sealed. The Corsican chief Cesar has demanded that Malik kill the Arab chief Ryad, or be killed himself. The means by which the murder has to be committed, and Malik's practising it, is one of the most insanely horrific scenes in recent cinema history. Half an hour into the run-time and Malik has established his modus vivendi, protected by the Corsicans, educating himself, working up his own network. He's still an outsider: too Corsican for the Arabs and too Arab for the Corsicans, but he is on the ascendancy. Once again, while he shows some initiative, this is basically success by default. When Sarkozy's new policy sends Cesar's goons back home, Cesar has no choice but to depend on Malik, and to exploit his day-release passes. During this middle-section, the movie seems to drift a little. There are excursions and petty deal-making - it all seems rather banal. But this is, in fact, the genius of the film's structure. Because it comes almost as a surprise that, inch by inch, Malik is now the man in control - and Cesar just a pathetic, lonely old man.

I shan't say more because I feel that UN PROPHET is a movie that works best when you know as little about it as possible. Suffice to say that I think this is a movie that is a worthy contender for Haneke's DAS WEISSE BAND as the foreign-language film of the year. Moreover, Tahar Rahim and Niels Arestup, as Malik and Cesar respectively, deliver powerful and nuanced performances worthy of praise in their own right.

Not to be missed.

UN PROPHET played Cannes, Telluride and London 2009 and Sundance 2010. It opened last year in Belgium, France, Russia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Greece and Portugal. It is currently on release in the UK. It opens in February in the Netherlands, the USA, Argenina and Spain. It opens in March in Germany, Israel, Taiwan, and Finland. It won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes.

THE BEAT THAT MY HEART SKIPPED - Breath-taking

This movie starts with all the style and cool and intensity of Tarantino at his best. Three young men on the prowl in Paris, wearing sharp black suits and skinny ties. They speak in slang and obscenities. They are negotiating how to split the money they'll make on a couple of deals. They listen to techno. They get out of their car at a run-down joint. Are they there to shoot someone? No. These are small time real estate brokers who will use any means necessary to close - whether that be beating up squatters or letting rats into a flat to reduce its sale value. The city is corrupt. The municipal council hands out permits to build at will. So they are corrupt. It is as simple as that. This casual and petty violence and callousness towards others seeps into their social lives. They get in brawls in bars, exploit women, and treat each other like so much trash. But it doesn't matter. They look good. They enjoy life. And yet. And yet. All is not well with our hero, Thomas Seyr. While his father is the king of corrupt realtors, his mother was a concert pianist. One day, on a whim, he chases after her manager and secures an audition. He badly wants to become a concert pianist too, but can he conquer the ties to his old friends, his business obligations and his own impatience and temper?

This is an emotionally searing movie. This is down to a superb supporting cast but most of all because of the breath-taking central performance of Romain Duris. He can be tender, vulnerable, physically frighteningl.... What can I say? It is a terrific performance. The movie also succeeds for two other reasons - one technical and one conceptual. On a technical level, while the director uses a lot of techniques to suggest a gritty urban environment - hand-held camera, extreme close up on half of the actors face while the background is out of focus - these techniques are not over-used to the point where they attract attention to themselves and detract from the story. The camerawork is not an obstacle here - we are permitted to empathise fully with Thomas. Conceptually, I think that the re-make has one key advantage over the movie on which it was based. In the original, the erstwhile pianist was played by Harvey Keitel and was the son of a mafiosi. His conflict between being a gangster and a pianist was far more extreme and melo-dramatic. Here, the director, Jacques Audiard, avoids making Thomas' father a comic-book villain. Instead, he is small-time businessman who is corrupt in a mean and petty, but realistic way. The choices facing Thomas Seyr are now less extreme, but far more credible and, thus, engaging.

I love this film.

THE BEAT THAT MY HEART SKIPPED (De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté) was released over the summer in France but is not yet available on DVD. It is still playing on limited release in the US, UK, Germany and Austria.