War Horse: Day 20 January 21, 2012

Some of my best nights out begin with a casual text: not the weeks of planning, taxi organising and outfit deliberations: but a ‘Want to do pizza and cinema after work?’

I had coffee and a flick through Vanity Fair and then a Little Wings dinner that was just lovely. We debated ideas on how to direct an as yet unpublished play; and I was struck again by just how far this one time student has so surpassed all this teacher taught him.

We went to see Warhorse. I haven’t read the book or been to the National to see the play but hope to remedy both those things. It was a slow start, and I feared it wouldn’t live up to all that I’d heard and read, and I have to say although I’m very much an animal lover I’m infuriated by that British viewpoint that places a higher emotional value on animal suffering than human and that glorifies and sanitises war fare: how wrong I was.

It is a psychologically devastating film. I was overwhelmed by the multitude of memories and connections it provoked.

Learning to ride a horse is one of the things that lie alongside dance and piano lessons on that rather pointless list ‘the childhood I wish I’d had’. My Daddy was an accomplished horseman, a competitive show jumper as a child, horses exist in the lifeblood of that side of my family. Daddy a great fan of cinema, would have loved this movie, time makes me miss him more.

The early farming scenes of the film reminded me of Heaney’s Digging and Follower; of the religious connection a farmer (and even a would-be City Chick farmer’s daughter/ granddaughter) has with his land. I was reminded of sweat, hours and lifeblood my grandfather and Daddy gave to the fields at home; and was once again humbled by their years of work and sacrifice.

I, like everyone, find war a difficult thing to comprehend and I realise more and more that it’s impossible to disentangle a personal view from propaganda but I do endeavour to separate my enraged politics from the human cost and experience. I don’t have forefathers that fought for King/Queen and country; they, of course, were busy growing the food for a fighting nation. But I spent my formative years (those Friday nights of pre 18 drinking) in pubs frequented by the soldiers of a near-by garrison town. I like my men in uniform and have a ridiculously romanticised idea of wartime romance. The battle scenes of the film are unrelenting and the Somme scenes truly horrifying, Wilfred Owen’s Anthem for Doomed Youth came creeping back to me… How can you measure, re-pay or put true value on such a magnitude of human sacrifice? And how can you not question how is it ever worth it?

The achingly under-played scene between the soldiers in No-man’s land, reminded me of the almost mythical Christmas football match. The film forces its audience to see the soldiers on both sides as the individuals they were and are. I managed to unravel a few lines of Keith Douglas’ Vergissminnicht and look beyond the educational indoctrination of my incredibly British and exclusively Protestant historical education, to look at the German soldiers as boys rather than the faceless ‘enemy’.

The cinematography is Oscar demanding. I bought the book online this morning. The images will stay me for a long time to come but I’m not sure I would put myself through the experience of ever watching it again.

Go see.

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