War Horse: Visual Storytelling
January 16th, 2012 § Leave a Comment
Copyright Dreamworks
I recently saw Steven Spielberg’s War Horse at the Highland Park Village Theater (my new favorite place to watch movies). The movie, set against the backdrop of WWI, is about a horse named Joey who is separated from his owner and must travel across the battlefields of Western Europe to eventually make it home. The film is a tear-jerker about friendship, loyalty, and hope in the face of insurmountable challenges – all subjects that Spielberg treats in a masterful way.
I was struck by the visual storytelling in this film. A good example occurs early on when the British cavalry (including Joey) charge a German encampment in a surprise attack. The Germans run into the forest, the cavalry in pursuit. Right when the British seem to have won the battle, a line of German machine guns opens fire from the forest, spraying the cavalry with bullets. Countless men and horses are killed.
It would be easy to read the previous description and imagine a scene reminiscent of Spielberg’s other war movie, Saving Private Ryan. In that film, the D-Day landing featured realistic carnage that sent some WWI vets running out of the theaters. But in War Horse, Spielberg took a more poetic and tragic approach to the scene.
We see the British cavalry charging right-to-left. The Germans run right-to-left into the forest where they man the machine guns. They begin firing into the oncoming cavalry. The scene now cuts between shots of the cavalry charging right-to-left, closeups of the German guns firing left-to-right, and wider shots of the forest edge with riderless horses running by the blazing guns. The effect on the audience is striking. While watching the scene, you know that as soon as the guns start firing, the cavalry is going to suffer heavy casualties. When the riderless horses race by, you hope that maybe the horses were not hit. But when the firing stops and the camera pulls back, you see an open field of dead men and horses. In this moment, the high cost of war becomes abundantly clear.
