Spielberg's 'War Horse': An emotional ride

When people asked screenwriter Richard Curtis how he planned "to do the horses" in Steven Spielberg's movie adaptation of "War Horse," he answered, "Well, with horses."

The question -- shared at a recent New York publicity stop by the film's director Steven Spielberg, creative staff and actors -- is not as ridiculous as it sounds. At the Lincoln Center Theater and in London, theatergoers have been weeping over the fate of horses portrayed by life-size puppets. And in Michael Morpurgo's 1982 English young-adult book on which the multi-award-winning play was based, the story -- from colt to farm horse to World War I casualty -- is told entirely from the point of view of a horse named Joey.

So no puppets. No talking equines. And none of the tripwires and other horrors regularly used to make animals seem like actors in the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood epics.

The result -- which opens around the country on Christmas Day with a Golden Globe nomination already in its saddlebag -- was shot with more than 100 horses, including 14 Joeys with different talents, plus people to do "equine hair and makeup," barbed wire made of plastic, a splash of animatronics for the scariest scene and a trainer Spielberg calls his "horse whisperer."

Roles for people, too

Oh, and there's also a large human cast, including newcomer Jeremy Irvine as Albert, the poor farm boy whose relationship with Joey is the core of what Spielberg considers "a love story between a horse and a young man." Although at least half of the story takes place on battlefields after Joey was sold to the cavalry, Spielberg says he is adamant that this is not "one of my war movies."

Rather, it is a PG-13 family movie that steps back from what he calls the "more gut-rending realistic looks at combat." Unlike "Saving Private Ryan," "Band of Brothers" and "The Pacific," this one does not dwell on the 16 million people -- and up to five million horses -- killed from 1914 to 1918.

Instead, Spielberg, who lives with 12 horses on his farm and whose wife and daughter are serious riders, says this movie is about the "connectivity that animals can bring to human characters." "It's really much more of a story about the hope that exists in extremely dark circumstances. Hope is always in Joey's face."

The project began when Kathleen Kennedy, one of Spielberg's longtime producers, took her children to the London production. She says she was "stunned by how emotional people were in the audience. I told Steven, 'I just saw this remarkable play.' "

Before Curtis adapted the book, he read it aloud to his daughter, "paying attention to the rhythms so that reading was a little like watching a film together." A mere seven months after Spielberg saw the play, filming began in the English countryside.

Not surprisingly, the movie is different from the play in major ways. First, there is the sense of the land. "This is an epic story where the land is a character," says Spielberg. "I knew we were going to use wider lenses, fall back and let the spectacular land tell the story."

Albert's damaged father (Peter Mullan) is more heroic than in the play. The movie tries harder to be seen through Joey's eyes. This is more like the novel, which Spielberg says he used as "a handbook of Joey's thoughts." Thus, Albert disappears for much of the second half because he stayed behind on the farm until he enlisted to find his beloved friend. Also, Joey the puppet is a chestnut -- that is, reddish-brown all over. In the movie, he's a bay -- reddish body with dark mane and tail.

The movie's star Joey, the one said to have the most expressive face, is played by Finder, whom "horse master" Bobby Lovgren bought after training him for "Seabiscuit." Spielberg says Lovgren put together a team of "gentle souls that understood how to connect with the gentle soul of these horses."

He says the horses reacted to the emotions of the actors and "started to improvise. Every single day, they brought something we never expected."

Irvine, 21, who had never been in a movie before, had also never been on a horse. That changed fast. He, like others who have to ride, trained for two months outside of London. Tom Hiddleston (F. Scott Fitzgerald in "Midnight in Paris") says, "Horses are such sensitive creatures. Actors like to think we are sensitive creatures, but we were outmatched by them."

Emily Watson, who plays Albert's understanding mother, says she believes the movie is also "kind of an antiwar film. It's a great big, beautiful, luscious picture but, inside, also something very profound. All these beautiful young men, millions were killed. The horse takes us through that, but doesn't take sides. The horse is loved by everybody."

Horse sensitivity

In the press materials, Spielberg says he hopes the story "will bring people together through this shared experience." Asked whether he thinks it could also make people care more about horses, he says, "A lot of people don't have exposure to horses. I hope the movie makes them appreciate their innate and natural intelligence. I hope it brings an awareness of the plight of horses both after World War I and the plight of horses today."

Specifically, he mentions that the government's recent restoration of the horse-slaughter industry, expected to kill 200,000 American horses next year for countries that eat horse. "I hope the movie brings up some awareness to that very sad turn of events."

Although the epic sweep of the movie has been called a homage to John Ford and D.W. Griffith, Spielberg says, "It was really a homage to Joey and the effect that animals often have on people, changing their lives for the better." He also says he knew he'd be competing with his other Christmas movie, "The Adventures of Tintin." "I knew that if I didn't make 'War Horse,' somebody else would and that would come out right on top of 'Tintin,' " he says with a shrug. "So what the heck?"

The drama of World War I on film

BY LEWIS BEALE, Special to Newsday

It was supposed to be "the war to end all wars" -- but, of course, it didn't. Yet World War I and its aftermath changed history in any number of ways: Empires were shattered, Communism arrived in Russia, the Nazi Party rose out of the ashes of Germany's defeat.

And World War I helped jump-start a relatively new art form. "The war happened at the moment when cinema became the centerpiece of pop culture," says Jay Winter, a Yale University history professor and author of "Over Here: The First World War and American Society." "The film industry grew when war became a mainstay of film, and war has been a mainstay ever since. The way in which war provided a backdrop for adventure stories gave the film industry an enormous boost."

In fact, hundreds of movies have been made about the war, including classics like "All Quiet on the Western Front" (1930), "Grand Illusion" (1937) and "Paths of Glory" (1957). And World War I still fascinates filmmakers: Steven Spielberg's new film, "War Horse," which opens Christmas Day, is set during the conflict, and in 2005, "Joyeux Noel," based on the true story of enemy soldiers who fraternized during an unofficial 1914 Christmas truce, was nominated for an Oscar as best foreign language film.

But the conflict also had an effect on literature and theater. "The great war books that are still in print, like 'All Quiet on the Western Front' , are written by people who engaged in irony to show the expectations of war and the outcome," says Winter. "The war universalized bereavement and provided a literature for people in mourning. It didn't matter who won or lost; everyone was a survivor."

Winter is referring to the fact that nearly everyone expected the war to last a few months, but it dragged on for four years, eventually killing more than 8 million soldiers. Only about 100,000 of those were American (the United States didn't enter the war until 1917), which means the so-called Great War is a more important touchstone in Europe than it is here.

But that doesn't mean works about the war don't resonate in the States. In fact, two recent World War I-set Broadway dramas featuring strong antiwar statements have enjoyed major critical success: "War Horse," the basis for the Spielberg film, won the 2011 Tony Award for best play; and the 2007 production of the 1928 play "Journey's End" was awarded a Tony for best revival.

Winter calls the conflict "the first catastrophe of the 20th century," and the trench warfare, almost unimaginable slaughter, senselessness of the whole enterprise, and that it touched so many millions of families, rank it as a horror of the first order. And it is this horror that makes World War I, and the artistic depictions of it, still relevant.

"We're still dealing with the consequences of it," says Winter. It was the "first industrialized war run by states with modern communications and transportation systems. No one was safe, no one was free from war. Not so before 1914."