By Sarah Sluis
Steven Spielberg hasn't directed a film since the meh sequel Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. His next film, War Horse, is coming out this Christmas, intent on grabbing audiences during what's often a sentimental, entertainment-heavy time of year. The teaser trailer for the movie just came out, but I wasn't immediately impressed.
The movie is based on the novel and play War Horse. I have heard nothing but raves for the play, so I was expecting the trailer to pull me in. It didn't. One key difference: The play received the most word-of-mouth praise from its incredibly life-like horse puppets. The movie uses a real-life horse, so it's hard to compare. The only hint of how the movie might give the horse humanizing attributes is at :50, when we see a close-up of a girl's reflection in the horse's eye. Gorgeous.
The trailer doesn't reveal the plot, just the settting and a loose sense of the emotional register. Since movies have been giving way too much away lately in trailers, I'm pleased that there's some mystery about the story, but at this point all we're seeing are shots of WWI and a horse. The actual story involves a boy who goes on a journey to find his horse, which is fighting in the battlefields of Europe in WWI. It's the kind of rescue mission that's implausible and melodramatic, but wasn't Saving Private Ryan founded on the same premise?
For a trailer that's based entirely on looks, it doesn't do a whole lot to draw you in. It took me a couple of viewings before I could appreciate the visuals of the trailer, my favorite being when a group of soldiers hiding in a wheat field collectively mount their horses. It made me reflect on Spielberg himself, who's always been nearly invisible in terms of style. People talk about Spielberg's frequent themes, like children of divorced parents and friendly aliens, but can't put a finger on his style. Spielberg's always followed the tenets of classical Hollywood style, as this discussion of his cutting style drives home.
Even when there are explosions (:10, 1:00), beautiful sunsets (1:35), and epic battle sequences (1:32), Spielberg has our eyes trained on the boy or the horse. It's pretty incredible. I put Spielberg with James Cameron in the category of filmmakers who are true masters of invisible filmmaking. In fact, it's enough to make me pull out my nerd hat and offer you this example, thanks to Hulu. In the T-Rex scene in his 1993 film Jurassic Park, look how clearly Spielberg establishes the space, opening with a wide shot and then moving in. Also notice how he pans to connect places. This short sequence has a half-dozen pans. Modern directors would just cut all over the place, and would also do some lame cut-ins, as if we wanted to see a close-up of a hand holding a flare when there's a T-Rex around. I'm being harsh on War Horse, but seeing the movie is a given. Even with tons of war scenes, the focus will be on the boy and the horse. It's directed by Steven Spielberg, the king of classical Hollywood style.
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