Steven Spielberg Interview For ‘War Horse’

‘War Horse,’ director Steven Spielberg’s epic adventure, is a tale of loyalty, hope and tenacity set against a sweeping canvas of rural England and Europe during the First World War. ‘War Horse’ begins with the remarkable friendship between a horse named Joey and a young man called Albert, who tames and trains him. When they are forcefully parted, the film follows the extraordinary journey of the horse as he moves through the war, changing and inspiring the lives of all those he meets – British cavalry, German soldiers, and a French farmer and his granddaughter – before the story reaches its emotional climax in the heart of No Man’s Land. The First World War is experienced through the journey of this horse – an odyssey of joy and sorrow, passionate friendship and high adventure. ‘War Horse’ is one of the great stories of friendship and war – a successful book, it was turned into a hugely successful international theatrical hit that is arriving on Broadway next year. ‘War Horse’ is set for release December 25th in the US, and January 13th 2012 in the UK. The film stars Jeremy Irvine, Tom Hiddleston, Benedict Cumberbatch, Patrick Kennedy, Emily Watson, Toby Kebbell, David Thewlis, Eddie Marsan, and Peter Mullan.

Why was it important for you to tell this story, or cover this period of history?

Steven Spielberg: The first thing I pulled from Michael Morpurgo’s book, and then was certainly inspired by seeing the play, was this idea of a family that is under the boot heel of a very strict and unforgiving landlord, they need to buy time to succeed as a farm. The father, in a drunken state, buys the wrong horse to pull the plough, to save the farm. The horse he buys, Joey, his breed of horse is in no shape to pull a plough – it’s not the kind of horse that does manual labour so to speak. Yet through a tenacious kind of belief in one another, the young son and Joey form this bond, and together they’re able to at least attempt to save the farm by ploughing an impossible, stony, infertile field. I think it says a lot about courage, that really spoke to me. I think that theme informs every frame of ‘War Horse.’

We didn’t invent the history of the horse and the first World War, which really spelled the end of the horse as a tool of war, as you know. This was the end of days for mounted cavalry charges, it was the end of days for the horse as anything other than beasts of burden. As time marched on to the 20th century, the horse became less and less useful in the military operations, it existed more symbolically than anything else. That was part and parcel of Michael’s book that he wrote in 1982 and certainly the play; we adapted both. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the first World War, I didn’t know much about it. I also don’t consider War Horse to be a war movie, it’s not one of my “war movies.” This is much more of a real story of the connections that, sometimes, animals achieve and the way animals can actually connect people together – that’s what Joey does. Joey’s miracles are really in his great sense of optimism and hope and all the people he encounters and brings something new into their lives. And so this was much more focused, I think, on the characters. The war certainly was a horrendous backdrop that created tremendous tension, drama and the need to survive, but the war, unlike ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ was not in the foreground of ‘War Horse.’

‘War Horse’ seems to have elements of a lot of John Ford’s great epics, and it seems to sum up some of the things you’ve spoken to in your previous films. Was that a conscious decision?

Steven Spielberg: Certainly not consciously. The conscious thing that I did was I made the land a character in the story, and by simply making the land a character and falling back to wide shots more than close-ups, to let the audience actually make choices about when and where to look, certainly that was the dynamic of most movies that were made in the 1930’s and 1940’s, not just by Ford but by Kurosawa in the 50s‘, by Howard Hawkes. Directors used what was before them, in that they celebrated the land and they made the land a character and they made spaces, environments characters in movies. I just thought that of all the films I’ve made in recent years, this offered the opportunity to include the land as a character which is a determining factor as to whether this Narracott family is going to even survive and either keep or lose their farm. And then the land becomes a bloody character as history tells us occurred on the Somme in World War I, on No Man’s Land. So because the land was such an influence both in Devon on the moors and such an influence in France, Janusz Kaminksi (cinematographer) and I just pulled our cameras back and I knew that was going to create all sorts of metaphors and questions of homage to the way directors approached Monument Valley for instance, the way John Ford made Monument Valley a character in so may of his Westerns. But it wasn’t a conscious thing, it wasn’t an homage to John Ford or to Griffith or to any other filmmaker, it was really an homage to Joey and the effect that animals often have on people in changing their lives for the better.

I saw a nice homage to having the goose from the play turn up, which was very funny. Was there anything else from the play you took away, either thematically or that you wanted to include for the fans of it?

Steven Spielberg: One of the catharses for me, and also helping me to want to tell this story to audiences as a film, was something that’s just sort of hinted at in the play. There’s a little moment where the Geordie and the German are able to help Joey, who is trapped in barbed wire. It was a lovely moment in the play, a very fleeting moment in the play, but it made a profound impact on me, and that was a moment that Richard Curtis (screenwriter) and I decided to expand and to go deeper with and that was something that the play certainly inspired. The great thing about theatre is there are some illusions that you can only create on the boards, that you can never create on film, no matter how many digital tools are at your disposal (laughs). That was the amazing moment in the play where the little Joey becomes the adult Joey in that incredible piece of visual theatricality and that you can never do in a film.

What was your own emotional reaction when you came face to face with the carnage, for example, at the Battle of the Somme? And how did what you learn about the War inform you for the film?

Steven Spielberg: My first reaction every time I delve into an episode of history that I don’t know very much about is…my first reaction is anger that my teachers never taught me about it. That was the first thing, “Why didn’t I learn this in school?” And the second thing was, just Kathleen Kennedy (producer) and I and Joanna Johnston (costume designer), a lot of us went to the Imperial War Museum and they opened up all of their backroom exhibits the public does not get to see on the First World War, and we were taken into the bowels of the museum, into their archives, because a lot of their exhibits are rotating exhibits and this was an exhibit that was just for our eyes only. We went back there and we saw some things and got statistics and learned so much that we didn’t know about the First World War. I wasn’t able to bring it out in the film because this wasn’t meant to be a history lesson, so there’s nowhere in the film where it says 4 and a half million horses were killed in the First World War, but it was important that we got to understand the kind of jeopardy both Joey and his best horse-friend Topthorn were going to be in. It really informed us and gave us a little more gravitas when we started to work with Richard Curtis.

For me there was a distinct visual palette for different sections of the movie. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Steven Spielberg: I think the greatest distinction in the visual palette, I think, is when we finally get to the French farmhouse. That’s the first time that the film is inflamed with colour, because it’s a bit of a respite and a great contrast to the coming events in No Man’s Land that we haven’t really seen yet, and so it was our last rest stop before things took a turn to the darker side of the war. I think there were three different palettes that Janusz established: the palette of these farmers just scratching out a living and failing miserably until Joey comes into their life and that had a real sense of nature, the sky, the ground. Janusz waited for the light, we all waited for the light, we waited for the right light, we waited for the right clouds to come over, and I haven’t waited for light in a long time (laughs). I kept saying, “But David Lean waited for light all the time,” but of course he took 300 days to make a movie. We only took about 64 for this one, but at the same time, Janusz was very insistent on waiting for the light, and it really paid off in dividends for us.

There’s a whole different colour palette in No Man’s Land, from that moment almost up until the end. We had real sunsets three days in a row, so the whole last few moments of the film, which I don’t want to spoil (laughs), but those are actual sunsets supplemented with filters, but that was actually flaming orange red sunsets that we were able to shoot. That was just renewal, hope renewed, a promise of some kind of hope and future for Albert and Joey to continue their lives together. That was the reason for that.

How was it working with the horses?

Steven Spielberg: There were times in the movie where I wouldn’t even tell the horse what to do. They’ll be in a scene and they would be reacting in the scene in ways I couldn’t imagine a horse would be able to react, or act. There were times where you just had to sit back and thank your lucky stars that the horses were somehow……..cognisant (laughs). Something was required of them that none of us could tell them, but they intuitively were able to give it to the moment in the scene. It was amazing.