Spielberg unabashedly makes mincemeat of our feelings, with lovely pastoral scenes, a darling colt, trench warfare, gut-wrenching battles, injured horses being shot, a truly upsetting scene with a horse hopelessly enmeshed in a snarl of barbed wire, outrageous coincidences, a happy ending with profiles silhouetted against a sunset...oh, you know, the whole spectrum of emotions. What a workout!
My biggest problem is that I have lived on a farm, so once again the city slickers strike out:
- They don't understand contour farming, so rain washes the crop downhill.
- They don't know that a healthy horse sleeps standing up.
- A horse won't step up and say, "Use me! My friend's leg is hurt!"
- WWI quartermasters turned dead horses over to the cooks! They didn't toss their carcasses into a pit.
- You really cannot get two grown horses into an upstairs farm- house bedroom. NOTE: One of my JayFlix colleagues says it IS possible but she won't tell me how she knows....
This 143-minute film works very well for city folks and the PG-13 script shields us from too much blood. We only HEAR those horses being shot and newcomer Jeremy Irvine makes a wonderful film debut. Of course he is ably supported by Peter Mullan ("Boy A") and Emily Watson ("Miss Potter") as his parents.
I hope the horse is nominated for Best Horse at the Academy Awards this year. He deserves it!
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Here is a link to a preview:
http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi3969097241/
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Here is a link to a preview:
http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi3969097241/
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