Who's Horse? (In a Northumbrian accent) Why, It's War Horse!

Von He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named rocked up his white stallion on Sunday afternoon to deliver my monthly thrashing and to drag me to see War Horse, the film he's been raving about all year. He hates horses and war, so this was the perfect film for him. I wanted to see it as well, because I'm SUCH A MASSIVE FAN OF THE BOOK, YOU KNOW, THAT BOOK THAT IS FOR CHILDREN. CHILDREN, NOT 37 YEAR OLD MEN.

Read an adult book, you slack jawed cunt...

I actually wanted to see it because Dr David Kenyon and TV's Andy Robertshaw had done the military advising on the film and Andy appeared as an extra. It became a game of 'Spot TV's Andy Robertshaw'. I won it outright as Herr He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named doesn't know what TV's Andy Robertshaw looks like.

That's one nil to me

There will be spoilers from here on in, so if you want to go and see this film then don't read on, though why you would want to spend your hard earned cash on this lump of shit is beyond me. I wasn't expecting greatness in the first place and I certainly wasn't disappointed. The film is full of the usual World War One tropes, but that is not the worst thing about it. We were supposed to empathise with the horse but He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named and I were talking about what was so special about the horse and we couldn't work out why everyone human seemed to want to have a love affair with the beast. Sure, it was a good looking animal, but it was patently rubbish. Despite being able to plough a field like a modern mechanical tractor it couldn't jump. What kind of fucking horse can't jump? A shit one, that's what kind. I guess this was a plot device in order to allow the fucking dumb animal to get tangled up in barbed wire in No Man's Land so Tommy and Jerry could have a bonding experience whilst freeing it and demonstrating how futile the First World War was. This last scene was supposed to be tense, with threat of the horse being blinded or dying during the rescue, but all tension was lost when you realised that the film is about the horse and there is no way on God's green Earth that the producers will allow an animal to die on screen. It just became a farcical and over long scene.

Otto Dix was thrown off the production after the unveiling of his storyboard

Speaking of dying, there was another unfathomable factor in this movie. The human 'star', Albert, is given his father's cavalry pennant and this finds its way onto the horse's tack as the horse is taken off to war as a good luck charm. It actually does the exact opposite and brings black luck on anyone that happens across it. The young officer who first buys the horse is killed during an attack, the two young Germans who go AWOL with the horse are shot at dawn without a trial (give me fucking strength...) and then the young girl who seemingly spends two years (as dated by the German soldiers helmets...) trying to teach the fucking useless horse to jump ends up getting killed. Even Albert is scarred for life with a gas attack. What kind of luck is that?

 Where's me pennant?

The final scenes really wound me up, when Albert is reunited with the horse it is at an Advanced Dressing Station. The doctor on duty has been pulled out of dressing station to have a look at the horse which is wounded. Now, my first question is, why didn't the Private take the horse to the Veterinary Corps rather than a fucking human doctor? He would have known they existed as the British Army of 1918 was dependent on animals. Secondly, why was the doctor pulled out of the Dressing Station to look at a horse when the men he was supposed to be treating were dying? Why would a single horses life count more than humans? This is the main premise of the film, that we supposed to care more about the life and death of one horse over the thousands of injured and dying men.

Leave those men, a horse somewhere is injured!

Anyway, the horse is injured and the doctor declares it cannot be healed so recommends that it is to be put out of its misery and a Sergeant steps up to the task. This is when Albert reappears, does his stupid owl hoot call and everyone is happy and joyful that the horse is actually his and not just some random horse. But what everyone seemingly forgets is that the horse is still injured and should be put out of its misery. But this fact is conveniently forgotten and the horse miraculously survives its injuries! This is literally scratching the surface of what is wrong with this film and I neither have the inclination or energy to detail everything wrong with it. Modern conception of the First World War is as a futile and senseless waste of life. I would argue that War Horse was a futile and senseless waste of my life.

Anyway, I was actually told off by a woman sat next to me for laughing so hard at the film. She told me to get myself an Airfix kit, I told her I already had some. I'm not really sure what she meant by that insult. He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named suggested the film would have been better had it been filmed by Ken Loach and I can't help but agree with him.

One on Ten.