War is hell, and we better not forget it. (The movie never does.) In France, Captain Nicholls is killed in his first charge riding Joey, and the horse falls into the hands of two animal-loving young German soldier/deserters, Gunther and Michael (David Kress and Leonhard Carow), who are caught and shot — and then into the hands of the same actor (Niels Arestrup) who played the similar kindly, earthy French farmer who rescued Sarah in Sarah’s Key, along with his game but fragile  little daughter Emilie (Celine Buckens) –and then into the hands of the German army again, which yokes Joey and his new horse friend Topthorn to huge armaments wagons, as haulers — a bone-crushing task that will probably break and kill them both before their time. Meanwhile, Albert, too young to legally enlist, finds a way over there anyway. He keeps searching for Joey.

It’s a Spielberg type of story. From the very beginning of his career (his teen sci-fi film Firelight), he’s been fond of yarns in which humans (often children), commune with or chase or try to rescue something non-human (sharks, animals, robots, or extraterrestrials) or in which often childlike or boylike protagonists are thrown into historical incidents or dangerous adventures. From that angle, War Horse is one of his most typical films, and, also one of his best-executed, most ambitious and finally, most moving.

The story is pure melodrama, of course. ( I won’t recount the resolution, but it won’t surprise you, though the setup may.) Yet this is melodrama done with feeling, visual grandeur and great style and assurance by a filmmaker who knows his craft better than almost anyone. Physically, it’s a beauty. War Horse, shot in Devon and other countryside settings, looks heavily influenced by the lush or pristine styles of the great British cinematographers of the ‘40s and ‘50s — by Jack Cardiff, Robert Krasker, Oswald Morris, Ronald Neame, Freddie Young and others — and it’s incredibly gorgeous, stunning in a David Lean–Michael Powell sort of way.

Disney had a soft spot for British subjects and style (and directors) and Spielberg does as well. You can tell that he and Kaminski would love to get images as beautiful as the ones Cardiff made in Black Narcissus and The African Queen, or Krasker in The Third Man or Morris in Moby Dick or Young in Lawrence of Arabia. Sometimes they do. Meanhile John Williams pours classic symphonic melody and orchestration down on the magnificent Devon countryside and on the terrifying war scenes, reminding us at times of the musical territory of Vaughan Williams and Benjamin Britten.

SPOILER ALERT

I liked War Horse very much and given what it’s trying to be, I had no serious problems with it — though personally, I would have preferred a darker, unhappier ending, which is obviously what the original author, Morpurgo, and these filmmakers didn’t want. (That would be like filming “Hansel and Gretel” and having the witch eat the children, something that  might actually please a lot of critics.) That’s my taste though; Spielberg leans more toward optimism, toward his mixture of Disney and Lean.

END OF SPOILER

Spielberg will always be at least something of a sentimentalist and melodramatist, as are many moviemakers we love, and he’ll probably always wear his heart and his art on his sleeve. War Horse is the kind of movie he wants to make and that he likes himself, and we‘d be fools to call for something like, say, Robert Bresson’s great austere from-a-donkey’s-eye movie Au Hasard Balthazar instead — or for more  Paths of Glory and less Lassie Come Home.

One strange thing. Since, according to The Hollywood Reporter, there are no less than 14 horses (and one animatronics creature) playing the part of Joey, and another four playing his friend Topthorn, it’s amazing that we feel as much empathy and attraction for this composite horse, as we do. Somehow the personality (and the nobility) of Joey, and the beauty of all the animals who play him, come across even though we don‘t have that sense of easy instant recognition that made stars of some equine and dog actors, like Lassie and Rin Tin Tin and Benji and Jimmy Stewart’s movie horse Pie. I‘m not sure we need it, but War Horse, for better or worse, is a movie where every technical problem is solved, and everything is seemingly at the director’s disposal. Sometimes that gives a show too much of a sheen and too much of a sense of perfection and inevitability.

In any case, War Horse was certainly one of the year’s best movies, and the best film Spielberg has done since his underrated A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. It’ was one of my favorites of 2011 — along with Hugo and The Tree of Life and In Darkness and The Artist and The Descendants and Source Code and Melancholia and City of Life and Death. That’s a fine list of films, though I suppose, if you dug hard, you could find something to carp about in all of them. I’d rather enjoy and admire them and hope for more of the same, including more Spielberg — and more noble steeds.

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