FILM: War Horse

[Note: War Horse releases in theaters on 12/25. It's the perfect holiday film, notwithstanding the graphic war-scenes, so you might consider buying your tickets now, especially if you liked the stage version, which this one-ups in just about every way possible.]

I felt as if I was one of the few people to find the Lincoln Center production of War Horse to be overhyped: never able to forget that I was watching elegant and impressive puppets, even at the moments of greatest drama, the constant thought racing through my mind was, "This would make a mighty impressive movie." I feel vindicated now, having caught a screening of Steven Spielberg's adaptation of War Horse: there's a scope in the war scenes (comparable to those of Saving Private Ryan, although there's nary a splotch of blood in this PG-13 family film) and a tenderness in the close-up focus on the reflection of a little girl in a horse's eye that the play cannot achieve.

At the same time, however, the novel (which was originally in the first-person perspective of the horse) is less well-adapted by screenwriters Richard Curtis and Lee Hall than by playwright Nick Stafford. For one, Albert Narracott (Jeremy Irvine) and his horse, Joey, now seem more star-crossed than ever: the film opens with lush, long shots of the green Devon landscape (which will later be contrasted with the tight, muddy grey ones of a war-torn France), as Albert watches the miracle of life: Joey's birth. When Albert's father, Ted (Peter Mullan), picks him up at auction, however, it's because his landlord (David Thewlis) is bidding for him, a rivalry that makes far less sense than the play's choice to make this his successful brother, the one who chose not to fight in the Boer War that has turned Ted into such a bitter drunk, love of his wife Rose (Emily Watson) aside. Likewise, when Joey's sold off to the British military at the start of World War I, it's not as much of a betrayal from father to son as it is a necessity of repaying a mortgage.

These changes make the opening "act" less tight, just as the scenes in France sometimes wander too aimlessly over the bizarre chances in which both Joey and his "friend," the black stallion Charcoal (inexplicably renamed from Topthorn in the book and play), dodge disaster time and again. It's nice to see the variety of people affected by war -- the dashing British commanders who are out-thought by their "crude" German rivals, the German brothers who desert in order to fulfill an oath to their family, the fragile French girl and her doting grandfather who are glad to have a moment of brightness in their occupied life -- but this isn't the film for it. The focus is best left on Albert, Joey, and the horrendous things that happen around them: Spielberg is too happy to trot about the scenery, though he's best at a brisker pace.

Just look at those "brisk" and agonizingly terrific final forty minutes. They're full of holiday miracles and tear-jerking presents in which Joey drags artillery, faces down a tank, and deals with barbed wire, while Albert -- who, in a smart although obvious edit from the screenwriters, has enlisted since we last saw him four years ago -- finds himself facing the other end of that artillery, the dangerous trenches, and the deadly gas warfare. It's more visceral than the theatrical production, and the stakes are higher, and yet the emotions are the same, which speaks well to the humanizing effects from the play's Handspring Puppet Company. Still, it's Spielberg's production that wins out: some horrors are impossible to imagine, and the realism of the film's war scenes -- fields scattered with the corpses of horses and their riders, bones shattering under the stress of such constant toil -- makes it unnecessary to imagine, only difficult to watch.

I don't imagine it will be possible to overhype this production of War Horse, a shoo-in for Academy nominations in all categories except those for acting (and that's no offense to Irvine, Mullan, the excellent Watson, and spot-on villain Thewlis, but this isn't really about them). Striking both visually and emotionally, and with only a few issues with pacing along the way, it's a great achievement (especially for an adaptation) for Spielberg, whose inclusive scope even manages to find a comic place for a belligerent duck.

MOVIE: Black Swan

Does any filmmaker tie music into his movies as well as Darren Aronofksy? His latest, Black Swan, has healthy helpings of the spiraling madness of Pi, The Wrestler's authentically grim look at the cost of being a professional, and the tightly orchestrated rhythms that made Requiem for a Dream so compelling. The end result is slighter, however, in that the film is meant to mirror a fantasy ballet -- that of Swan Lake -- and thereby really only succeeds in showing the precarious edge between genius and madness: the potential cost, that is, of perfection.

It's an art-house suspense flick, in which the hero, soloist Nina (Natalie Portman), is hunted as much by her preening rivals within the company -- most notably Lily (Mila Kunis) -- as she is by herself. And yet, the film is exquisitely shot by Matthew Libatique and scored by the reliable Clint Mansell (and with healthy doses of Tchaikovsky) to the point of suffocating tension: her pressures and struggles are larger-than-life phantasms and everyday demons, all at once. The film mainly focuses on Nina's troubles, but it does at least hint at the wider implications of fame: her career mirrors that of the company's former star Beth (Winona Ryder) -- now a drunken, broken, discarded wreck -- and rebels against the never-a-lead-dancer ways of Erica (Barbara Hershey), who is now little more than a vicarious, controlling stage mother.

What Aronofsky captures so brilliantly is the sense of high-stakes pressure: there are constant close-ups of the en pointe twists and the agonizing sound effects of physical therapy (foot joints acrackle), the infinite reflections of mirrors (closing in and endless, all at once), and a sense of isolation for the lead -- scorned by her fellow dancers, castigated by her forceful director Thomas (Vincent Cassel), and given her own room. Nina is shown constantly in motion and usually in white, all aflutter and spun around -- manipulated, even -- by those who would lift her up for their own gain. This, of course, fits perfectly with the ideal of beauty that Odette -- the White Swan -- represents, and it's no surprise that Nina begins to crack as she attempts to also portray Odile, the evil Black Swan. After all, she has been told to "lose herself" in the role, to "loosen up" in order to be more perfect, to find the passionate misstep that is in fact the right step toward transcendence.

The thematic motifs -- color shifts between white and black, to say nothing of Portman's increasing aggression, or of Swan Lake itself -- are what elevate the film to art itself, what make it more than a one-note descent into madness. At the same time, the limited colors -- polar opposites, setting the film always at one extreme or another -- are what keep Black Swan from being a masterpiece. The craft is perfect, and so the transcendent surprise is absent; the airtight pressures choke us up, but also suffocate our emotions. It is a swan that does not fly, and yet whose grace nonetheless keeps us spellbound. ---- B+