War Horse

Written at the time of the film's release...

"The Lives That Pass Through a Horse"

or

"Come On, Joey! Come On!"

The one-two punch of two Spielberg movies opening within a week of each is almost an embarrassment of riches, and in going from Tintin to War Horse it's a journey from the ridiculous to the sublime. We've seen what happens when Spielberg tries to make a Kubrick film (A.I.: Artificial Intelligence), a David Lean film (Empire of the Sun) or cut up like Hitchcock (Jaws), but what happens when he makes a John Ford film?

The answer is War Horse, based on the 1982 children's book by Michael Morpurgo, which was subsequently staged as a play adapted by Nick Stafford at London's National theater. Somewhere on this journey, Spielberg got wind of it, and the tale of World War I told from a horse's point of view became Spielberg's second Christmas release. Horse movies have all the sentimental elements of fables, which is why children love them, but the circumstances of this one have little to do with childhood concerns, but have more to do with kinship between man and beast in an unsentimental, often brutal world of adults. 

It has all the elements of Ford: the Irish flavor as it begins in Devon, with the Narracott family acquiring a noble, unbreakable horse for plowing their hard-scrabble field; the horse—named Joey—learning to trust its first master, young Albert (Jeremy Irvine); the family being threatened with eviction by an uncaring bank (personified by David Thewlis' examiner); the "it takes a village" atmosphere that Ford engendered in his films (and not necessarily to come together in a common purpose, so much as to comment and gossip on it); the low comedy relief of animals—Spielberg makes goofy use of a particularly belligerent farm-goose and Ford favored horses that acted against training and merely acted like horses. Even the town of Devon looks precisely like the 20th Century Fox back-lot recreation of the Welsh mining town in Ford's How Green Was My Valley.

But tough economics trumps sentimentality here and the horse is sold into service in WWI to keep the family going, and The Great War passes the horse from hand to surviving hand, some gentle, some harsh as the battles change the landscapes and fortunes of those in the European theater.

The war goes from planned charges to muddy trench warfare, Spielberg opens it up with a spirited run where, Joey, alone and ownerless for the first time in the film, makes a desperate gallop for freedom (something possibly learned by a former caretaker), through, over and past the soldiers huddled in the trenches and ironically ending his gallop in the middle of No Man's Land, where warring parties must watch and wonder at the sight between them that has nothing to do with the concerns of Man.

But, where War Horse most resembles Ford's work is pictorially—Spielberg sticks to close shots for moments of drama, but when he opens up, it calls to mind advice that the old Commander gave the young director when he was still dreaming of making movies (see video below). He's definitely paying attention to the horizon in this one, and the film, especially in its final moments, seems to come from a different era, one more rich in design and purpose.

In its color, both in sentiment and photographically, War Horse hearkens back to another period of cinema, one that was simpler and more direct, but it never betrays anything less than sophistication of subject matter and maturity of purpose, while still maintaining a high level of entertainment value. At this point in his career, Spielberg is presenting a master class in film-making, evoking the past when it suits him, but maintaining a personal growth that seems to never flag.

I'm Thinking of Ending Things

The Beautiful Mind of Charlie Kaufman

or

"I Suppose I Watch Too Many Movies." "Everybody Does; It's a Societal Malady."

Writer-director Charlie Kaufman is a creator of a particular niche, but nothing so ephemeral as a consistent genre or style. He's not someone you go with expecting a "twist ending" or a particular visual "language". His projects take you down roads nobody has ever travelled before in movies with concepts wholly original, whether metaphorical or philosophical. You recognize the landscape as being of "the real world" but there it ends as far as a frame of reference for where he's taking you is filtered not though the physical eye, but the mental point of view. His fables and myths are of the mind and its undiscovered countries. 

Most movies make you feel. Kaufman's make you think. Sometimes painfully.

Whether they ponder identity and wish-fulfilment like Being John Malkovich, or emotional response as in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Anomalisa, or the act and process of creation—Adaptation. or Synecdoche, New York—Kaufman takes the "what if?" approach to crystallizing the concepts, the same way a science-fiction writer throws a magnifying lens on a subject by imagining its inverse or subverting traditional norms. Watching Kaufman is like watching "The Twilight Zone" but not going to a "fifth dimension" but definitely "to the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge."

Kaufman's new film (streaming on Netflix) I'm Thinking of Ending Things is based on the 2016 novel by Iain Reid—but not the way Adaptation. is based on "The Orchid Thief". For that film, Kaufman made a screenplay of trying to "crack" the writing of the screenplay, and made his own difficulties doing so part of the narrative (and having done that, tossed away the book's specifics to get to its heart). For Reid's book, he took the method the writer was employing and wrote his own more visual ending while staying true to his resolution.

The result is a meandering stream of conscious quilt of a movie that involves the fears and tensions of interaction, the arbitrariness of life—and thought, and, something that might be of concern in these days of COVID, the bubble of "interiority". It can be a healthy mode of analysis or it can be a trap in a hall of mirrors.

We start out with a young couple (Jessie Buckley, Jesse Plemons) on that ritual step of dating—meeting the parents (his). This can be the stuff of comedy (Meet the Parents) or the stuff of horror (Get Out). With Kaufman, it's a little bit of both with a mutated dash of Lynch. We see the couple—her voice-over talking about how she's "thinking of ending things"—as they drive through the snow, the conversations of fits and starts, the mis-understandings of meaning, the doubts of the relationship despite having "so much in common." She's loquacious, even animated, while he has a nervous remoteness, bordering on a muted hostility, nervous, perhaps, about her entering into the family sphere he is only too familiar with...and (as they say) familiarity breeds contempt. 

He's driving. He'll always be driving.

Once we meet Jake's parents—after a prolonged, uncomfortable wait, where she meets the farm's dog with perpetual shaker syndrome and a door leading to the basement with scratch marks on one side and masking tape on the other—things to start really getting weird. Dad (David Thewliss) appears to be palsied and Mom (Toni Collette) is a paroxysm of nervous laughter. Jake turns slightly diffident and embarrassed by his parents and all she can do is try and make the most of it, but things are clearly out of whack here. It isn't long before she starts making excuses to leave because she has work in the morning.

Besides, the snow is starting to really come down. You have to be careful. The roads are treacherous.

Kaufman occasionally cuts away, without warning, to an elderly janitor cleaning a high school in the middle of the night. It's also snowing, and the theater troupe is practicing in the gym, and on his break he watches a TV movie.

But, things are getting weirder back at the farm. The snow's not letting up, and, although everybody's holding up their end of the conversation, there are things Jake doesn't want to talk about...like how they met at a trivia contest, and he was so good at it, and they had so much in common that he asked for her phone number. It's funny about the picture of him as a child on the wall, though. It looks just like her as a child. That's just...weird.

What...just, wait...what is going on here? After awhile, one wonders who's having the brain infarction: her or you? There appears to be a logic to it, but...no. To talk about details will be to spoil surprises...that is, if you have the patience to go along with it, and wonder exactly where you're being taken in this snowstorm. It may not be your idea of entertainment. In which case, reading the 1-star reviews over at IMDB might be more your style (some of them are almost clever!).

But, let's admit it: this one's not for everyone. For those who aren't engaged by a movie in the first 20 minutes it's a non-starter (and you'll think of ending it, lol—those IMDB commenters are a hoot!) If you have a favorite Charlie Kaufman movie, this isn't like it, and you'll like it only if you're into the off-beat and you're not comfortable in the David Lynch-end of the universe. Oh, there are joys: at one point Our Heroine goes into a straight-up imitation of Pauline Kael criticizing A Woman Under the Influence (1974), which is a hoot—even her cigarette comes out of nowhere. 

But, it's Kaufman playing around with the form, and sometimes that can be frustrated if one wants things tied up with a bow, or already chewed and spat into your brain. This one's about depression and loneliness and despair and "what-might've-been" and sometimes watching something like that can be depressing in and of itself.

But, it can also be intriguing and imaginative. Oh, I wouldn't blame ya for I'm Thinking of Ending Things. 

But, it's my cup of arsenic. 

Wonder Woman

Hola!
or
You're a Wonder, Wonder Woman

There is quite a bit of irony in that the one movie that DC Comics has been delaying and delaying, re-starting and re-stopping may be the best movie they have produced since the halcyon days of The Dark Knight.

Suffering Sappho, it's Wonder Woman. And after 75 years, it's about frickin' time!

No, there's never been a Wonder Woman movie, even though she's one of "The Big Three" in DC comic's super-hero line-up. She has long been a merchandising bonanza for DC, had her own television series (which lasted quite awhile...on two networks). Hell, she was even the first cover person on Ms. Magazine.*

But, DC has been pussy-footing around with the character (just as they have been with the comics character for years), trying to figure out how to handle a Wonder Woman. 

The answer came pretty definitively when she was introduced in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice; whatever one thinks of that movie, the one thing everybody agreed on was that the character's appearance was a highlight. How could she not be when the titular males are such moody, squabbling neurotics?

I knew I liked what they were doing with the character when, after several smarting-offs to Bruce "Batman" Wayne in her civilian identity, she joins in the fight against the Kryptonian monster and is delivered a hay-maker that sends her flying...and she smiles, with a relish that there's no need to hold anything back.** That was different, and that Gal Gadot could hold her own and dominate Henry Cavill and Ben Affleck in their roles was more than apparent.

In the new solo movie, how great Gadot is in the role is readily apparent. In Batman v Superman, she has been in man's world for pretty much a century and Gadot plays her with a cynical, knowing charm that can cut someone down with just a withering gaze. In this new film, she is a stranger in a strange land, and Gadot's portrayal with wide-eyed forthrightness is a stark contrast, but no less assured.

There is a book-ending prologue in modern times when Diana Prince (Gadot) goes to her job as an antiquities curator at the Louvre and is brought a gift of sorts from Wayne Enterprises, an antiquity of its own—an original of the photograph of her and soldiers in Belgium during World War I found in the Luthor archives of meta-humans alluded to in Batman v. Superman. There begins her narration: "I used to want to save the world, this beautiful place. And mankind (chuckles). But the closer you get, the more you see the great darkness within. I learned this the hard way, a long, long time ago."

Cut to the island of Themyscira, out of time and out of place; dimensionally separated from the modern world, it is a product of the Greek gods,** inhabited by the Amazons, a race of women warriors charged to oversee the safety of the world from the god of war, Ares, banished to Earth for his part in the decimation of the other gods. The Amazons are immortal, except for the child, Diana, precocious princess, daughter of Queen Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen). Little Diana is a handful. While Hippolyta goes through tutors trying to teach her to be a princess, Diana only wants to hang out watching her Amazon sisters go through battle drills led by Antiope (Robin Wright) who puts them through their paces. Diana wants to be a warrior, but her mother is protective, forbidding her to be trained in the Amazonian battle arts (which combines weapons-work with Cirque du Soleil).

But, the kid is head-strong and sneaky and Antiope trains her in secret, telling her that if she takes this path, she has to be ten times better than their most-skilled warrior to prove her worth. Hippolyta has other plans for Diana—and it's not battle. She wants Diana to be Queen and tells her stories of their people's past—of gods and monsters and conflict—of how Ares killed the gods and crashed to Earth, and how Zeus charged them with protecting the planet should Ares arise again. Reluctantly, she shows her Hestia's lasso of truth and a sword of great import. Only the "God-Killer" can defeat Ares, she says.

This is a great sequence, done with a lot of visual flair—Hippolyta's history stories are like 3-D paintings, and the amazonian practice sessions are amazingly choreographed. Plus, the actresses do great work here—they all speak with Gadot's untraceable Mediterranean accent—and Wright is especially good as the nail-hard Antiope.

But, as Diana achieves a certain level of stature, her world is shattered. Not so much shattered as invaded; a biplane smashes through the energy barrier separating the island from the world at large and crashes into the sea. Diana rescues the lone pilot, American Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), who just has enough time to burble out the expected "Garsh! Yer bee-YOO-ti-ful!" before German U-boats also crash through the barrier—ladies, you need to fix that thing—and storm the beaches.  

This is a great sequence and director Patty Jenkins (whose previous feature directing was the extraordinarily good 2003 drama Monster that garnered Charlize Theron her Best Actress Oscar) pulls out all the stops. The Germans only have one position—they're storming the beachhead. The Amazons, however, come from all sides, swinging down off the Themyscira cliffs from ropes and on horse-back in a flying wedge formation. 

The Germans are caught flat-footed, but they have one tactical advantage; they have rifles, which have been previously unseen by the Amazons who are using swords, bows and arrows and knives. The Germans have an advantage at a distance, but if the Amazons get in close, they don't have a chance. It is a fascinating dance of death between the disorganized Germans and the highly synchronized Amazons. It is a battle of differing strengths and there are significant losses on both sides.

Despite the casualties, the Amazons are victorious, but the double-whammy of Trevor's appearance and the German attack leaves them with a serious case of culture shock if not clash. Trevor is rushed before the Amazons, where, under questioning, he only gives his name rank and serial number. Bureaucracy means bupkiss to the Amazons and they bind him with the lasso of truth to find out his real story.

With a little comic resistance, Trevor can't help but burble out the truth; turns out he's a spy, infiltrating the German air command on a mission to secure information about secret German weapons. The world (he tells them) is at war. "What war?" asks Diana. "The war to end all wars..." confesses Trevor and this causes a stir among the Amazons, but mostly with Diana who takes the news with only one conclusion—the god Ares is behind it all, and to fulfill the duty of the Amazons, she takes it upon herself to go to Man's World and do battle.

I'll stop there with the synopsis. The film still has 90 minutes to go, but the good will generated by the first 30 of it carries through the movie. Not that the rest of it isn't good (it's fantastic, frankly), but those exotic opening sequences overshadow the rest of the movie taking place in Man's World, despite the efforts to recreate WWI-era London and Belgium. There will always be a little drop in atmosphere with the transition, but, fortunately, Gadot's performance as Diana (she's never called "Wonder Woman") aided by the loose and effective Pine (who seems to be capable of doing terrific work in every film—and genre—he's in) keep the inventiveness up and provide the audience a very real investment in the characters, their goals, and their relationship to each other. Other superhero movies feel like they're just going through the motions and that's been a little wearying of late, but Wonder Woman takes a different tack; it's not another "revenge" story. This is about people who are out to do good (like super-heroes are supposed to do, not relentlessly seeking revenge or creating property damage).

Zack Snyder did the story (it all ties in to that photograph from his Batman v Superman), but Alan Heinberg's script (his first for the movies) and Jenkins' extraordinary direction (this is her first action film and her first in the 3-D format and it feels like she's been perfecting this for a whole career—why can't everybody be this good?). DC has been taking a drubbing for their superhero films that have been dark and brooding and destructive, as if they're trying too hard to be taken seriously, while the films out of the Marvel camp have had the reputation of being consistent crowd-pleasers (but only if the crowd is easily pleased). But, even the best of the Marvel creators have stubbed their toes when they had to do their second films, as if the veneer of uniqueness was impossible to maintain. They have a good "formula" but I've never been moved by a Marvel film or any of the recent flood of this genre of film.

This one, I was. And it came at the oddest place. At one point during the WWI sequence, Diana and Trevor and his odd clutch of mercenaries (played by Said Taghmaoui, Ewen Bremner, and Eugene Brave Rock) are in the trenches of "No Man's Land" where there has been no advancement for weeks, just the stasis of trench warfare and Trevor is perfectly content to keep it that way. But Diana isn't. She shucks off her cloak, and it's the first time we see her in her "Wonder Woman" garb, which has always been the weak point of the character. The spandex costumes are always the least realistic part of the superheroes in the transition from comics to film depiction and various film-makers have taken pains to make them more "bad-ass" or complicated to get around it. These film-makers are no exception, making Diana's costume more armor-like and less-swim-suited than it is in the comics. 

But, still...there's a lot of exposed flesh to that costume and one can't get around the cheesiness and impracticality of it, but bringing it out at this moment when the surroundings are so blasted and the threat is so dire, that one is taken aback by the brio of it. 

And then the attack begins...

...starting with a shot that echoes one in that Themyscira battle sequence that had deadly consequences before, but this time...

And, then the bullets start flying, bombs are lobbed...

...and she keeps advancing, getting deeper into the destruction and closer to the German trenches...

This has never happened to me seeing a superhero movie—but I had tears in my eyes. I don't know what it was about this sequence—the build-up, the music, the audaciousness and go-for-broke aspect of it (whether on the part of the film-makers or the character—either one, I'd wager) but this sequence made me cry. I don't get gut-punched too often going to movies, as I'm usually a bit cynical about being manipulated by them, so entrenched is that aspect in film-making to the form, but this...this clobbered me.

My reaction totally surprised me. That happens rarely these days—that something happens in a movie that I react so viscerally to it, but when it happens, one can't dismiss it, and you have to pay a certain amount of homage to the film-makers for evoking such a result. When that happens, I need to applaud the artists who did it by admitting that, yeah, they got me, alright.

And in that silliest of forms, a super-hero movie, to boot.

It's not all perfect—the villains, though respectable, aren't all that exciting, but it's a refreshing change when the heroes are more interesting than the villains—and the final confrontation seems a bit genre-conventional for this good a film. But, that doesn't mar the overall superb-ness of the experience. Anytime Gadot, Pine or their mercenaries are on-screen, the film is clicking on all cylinders, and Jenkins' direction is so assured and sometimes delightfully inventive that you forget how tough this stuff is to do. It's a breath of fresh air in a genre that has been getting very musty, lately.

And it comes down to one thing—super-heroes are supposed to inspire. They're supposed to be the best of us, myths to show us "the way," even in these cynical times. Our film super-heroes have become too narcissistic, too brooding, too self-involved and self-important to truly inspire—in fact, they've probably inured us to think that may be honorable, when it isn't. Superheroes need to show us how to make lemonade out of life's lemons, in the event our DNA changes, or we get bitten by a radioactive spider, or splashed with chemicals during a lightning storm, or...the planet blows up (that one's not unreasonable).

 

We need to know that we can get through it, not hunker down in a cave and collect conspiracy theories. We need to be the best we can be, with whatever gifts, whatever detriments life hands us.

Given what I've seen in the past, I don't want to live in Superman's world, or Iron Man's, and especially not Batman's. But, I'd like to live in Wonder Woman's...if only because Wonder Woman is in it. 

A super hero.

*

Superman used to take center-stage in the Justice League.

These days, it's a different story.

** Director Zack Snyder says that wasn't directed, that it was Gadot's choice in one of the takes of the scene: "Did you mean to do that?" he asked her after filming. Yeah, she had. She had a better bead on the character than the writer-director.

*** Despite those Greek origins, there's nothing Greek about Themyscira, eliminating the traditional marble columns of the comics, but making it look like a wholly organic society living off the land. A nice touch.