Yes, this crime novel was first published in 2011 and it is by the C.S. Forester who wrote the Hornblower novels. No, Forester is not still alive, writing his novels in some kind of cryogenic writer's den. The Pursued was written in 1935 when C.S. was already a successful author with one Hornblower novel to his credit. His publisher promptly misplaced the manuscript of The Pursued and it remained lost until 1999. I have a sneaky feeling the publisher lost it on purpose. The Pursued is not what the public would have been expecting, or comfortable with, from the author of Hornblower and The African Queen.
The story is set in suburbarn London and begins with Marjorie Grainger returning home one night to discover that her sister Dot has stuck her head in the gas oven and killed herself. Marjorie and her husband Ted were both out, seperately, visiting friends. Dot had been minding the couple's two children. The inquest reveals that Dot had been three months pregnant. Marjorie and her mother put two and two together and realize that not only was Ted the father, he's also a murderer. The suicide was faked. They can't prove any of this, but the truth is obvious. Mrs Clair decides she must kill Ted. The novel starts out on a grim note, and after that it just gets sadder and nastier.
There are several remarkable aspects to this novel, the first being its resolutely bleak tone. Forester wrote this during the Golden Age of murder mysteries, the era of Christie, Carr, Sayers, and so on, and yet this couldn't be further from their world of vicarages, amateur sleuths, and lashings of cream teas. Admittedly this isn't a mystery, but it was very much out of step with contemporary British crime and mystery writing. Neither is it hardboiled. There's little violence and the none of the characters work for or against the law. Call it suburban English noir. Contemporary readers would, I think, have been scandalized by the novel's sexual frankness and by an ending that is fairly dripping with despair. Perhaps even more shocking would be the fact that the end of the novel leaves the fates of most of its characters up in the air. The only thing we can guess is that things don't go well for them.
As I was reading The Pursued the author I kept being reminded of was George Orwell. Forester, like Orwell, has a very lean, clean, and sober prose style, but, more interestingly, in this novel he shows an Orwell-like ability to dissect and examine the world of the English middle-class. From food to sex, Forester lifts the lid on the dry, dull, mean lives that lie at the end of suburban rail lines. If this novel had been released in 1935 its most horrific element for English readers would be Forester's presentation of middle-class lives being destroyed. Forester is merciless in showing his characters suffer as their middle-class world falls to pieces. The final section of the novel gains a lot of its tension from watching Marjorie and Mrs Clair have their proper, polite lives turned to ash. If the Orwell of Coming Up for Air had decided to try his hand at crime fiction this is probably the novel he would have written.
For an author who's mostly known for producing manly novels about Napoleonic warfare on the high seas, Forester proves to be excellent writer of female characters. Marjorie and Mrs Clair are described in detail and depth, and the novel's emotional punch benefits enormously from the care Forester takes in crafting these two characters. This is not a perfect novel. The two main male characters are barely two-dimensional, and Forester doesn't always have a good ear for dialogue. Those problems aside, this is an intriguing piece of crime fiction that might make you look at C.S. Forester in a whole new light.
This history of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan is valuable if only for a widely-believed myth it manages to dispell. The myth is that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was part of a grand strategy to expand the Soviet empire and acquire a warm weather port. Braithwaite, using interviews with ex-Politburo members and records of Politburo meetings, shows conclusively that the Soviet leaders were very reluctant to prop up Kabul's communist government. Like the Americans in Vietnam, the Soviets felt forced into propping up an ideological allyor see them swept away. Their hope was that a few years of military support and training would allow the Afghans to rule and police their own country. Sound familiar?
After only a couple of years in Afghanistan the Russians, even those at the top of the political and military food chain, were aware that they were in a no-win situation. They could control the cities and some key highways but beyond that the country belonged to the mujahedin. And year after year it became more obvious that at some point the Soviets would have to cut their losses and leave. The problem was how to do this without appearing to abandon an ally. This conundrum lead to the war dragging on for several more years, all to no purpose except to further increase casualties on all sides.
Possibly a million Afghanis were killed during the war and millions more became refugees in neighbouring countries. A lot of the deaths were the result of feuds and power struggles between the differenct ethnic, religious and politcial groups that made up the mujahedin. One of the more shocking things revealed here is how badly the Soviet Army treated its soldiers. Rations were poor, pay virtually a joke, and, worst of all, basic healthcare was shockingly bad. The army suffered from major and constant outbreaks of hepatitis and cholera, both of which were due to slipshod management of water and sanitation. Medical treatment for wounded soldiers was rapid, but the overall quality of the medical care was terrible, mostly thanks to a shortage of medical supplies. And all this was on top of the daily physical hardships and brutality of life in the Soviet Army.
Braithwaite has a fascinating story to tell, but it has to be said that he's not much of a writer. He was the British ambassador in Moscow from 1988-92, and that has certainly provided him with some excellent sources, but too often his book reads like a briefing report. If you read this book follow it up with The 9/11 Wars by Jason Burke (my review here). Burke's book covers the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, and it's an excellent overview of a complicated and controversial subject.
This isn't going to be a full-on review of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly; let's just take it as a given that you've seen it, you love it, and you agree that it fits into any list of the top one hundred films of all time. An aspect of GBU that hasn't had much, or any, recognition is that the plot isn't just about three men hunting for hidden gold. That's just the top layer to the story. On a symbolic level GBU is about Christ and the Devil fighting for Tuco's soul. If you've finished snorting in derision, I'll continue.
Let's begin with the naming of the characters. Only Tuco, the Ugly, is given an actual name. The Bad is called Angel Eyes, and the Good is named Blondie. The last two have been given symbolic names. Angel Eyes is a reference to Satan as a fallen angel, and Blondie, well, who's always presented in religious paintings as being blonde? The good and bad references seem obvious, but why is Tuco identified as ugly? What does ugly mean in this context? Eli Wallach's certainly no oil painting, but what I'm guessing it refers to is that Tuco, like all mankind, is living in original sin; he's made in God's image, but is marred, made ugly, by orginal sin. Sergio Leone pretty much annouces what he's up to off the top with freeze frames on each character that are accompanied by a caption identifying them as good, bad or ugly. Once he's done this then you know this isn't going to be your average western.
Angel Eyes' satanic character is made explicit early in the film when, after killing two people who've each hired him to kill the other, he remarks to the last victim that when he's paid he always sees a job through to the end. According to folklore one must never do a deal with the Devil because he'll always find a way to turn the tables on you, and that's exactly what we see happen when we first meet Angel Eyes.
Blondie's credentials as Christ are even more apparent. In fact, at one point Angel Eyes refers to him as Tuco's guardian angel, and, just on cue, the sound of a heavenly choir rises in the background. When Tuco takes the injured Blondie to a monastery/hospital the room he's put in conveniently has a painting of the cruxifiction just outside it, which Tuco prays in front of for a brief moment. Blondie's holiness becomes more explicit once the action moves to the Civil War battle by the river. Blondie is appalled by the loss of men and tells the dying commanding officer (to whom he administers a kind of last rites by giving him a bottle of booze) to expect "good news" soon. He and Tuco blow up the bridge and thus end the battle. Blondie's Christ-like nature becomes explicit shortly after he and Tuco cross the river. Blondie goes into a ruined church and comforts a dying soldier by giving him a cigarillo and his coat. The way this scene is filmed suggests that this isn't just an act of random kindness, this is to be taken as an act of divine mercy.
Tuco, despite acting in a decidedly unholy way, is quick to use religious imagery. He crosses himself virtually every time he comes across a dead body, and he tells Blondie that when he, Tuco, is hanging at the end of a rope he can feel the Devil "biting his ass." In one of the film's key moments, Tuco is about to hang Blondie in revenge for having abandoned him in the desert. The sound of artillery is rumbling in the background and Tuco comments that there was also thunder heard when Judas hanged himself. Tuco's split nature is shown during a brilliant scene with his brother Pablo, a priest, at the monastery. Tuco greets his brother with warmth, but his brother gives him a very un-Christian cold shoulder. In the same scene Tuco lets his brother know that his choice of a life of crime was not his first choice, and that Pablo's decision to become a priest was a form of cowardice. The scene leaves us knowing that Tuco is, to a degree, morally conflicted.
The fight for Tuco's soul first becomes obvious in the scam Blondie and he run. Blondie turns Tuco in for the reward money and then shoots away the rope when Tuco's about to be hung. Each time Tuco is about to face death a list of his crimes is read out by the local sherriff. It's as though he's facing a roll call of his sins, or, because he's allowed himself to be put in this position, he's confessing his sins. And after each confession he's granted forgiveness by Blondie/Christ who shoots the rope. Blondie ends the relationship, and on a symbolic level it's because he thinks Tuco has received a moral lesson about his life of crime.
The final shootout in the cemetery brings all the religious themes to a head. To begin with we have the gold buried in a grave, a clear warning that worldly wealth equals death. Angel Eyes is killed by Blondie and slides into an open grave. Not content with having killed Angel Eyes, Blondie then shoots his fallen hat and gun into the grave. It looks very much as though Angel Eyes is being cast back down to Hell. Blondie then makes Tuco put a rope around his own neck and stand on a cross marking a grave. Blondie then rides off. Tuco is left perched precariously on a cross, staring down at bags of gold lying on the ground. The message seems obvious: as long as Tuco stays on the Holy Cross he stays alive; if he leaves the cross for the gold, for worldliness, he dies, and not just in this world. The juxtaposition of shots showing Tuco's desperation to stay on the cross and his view of the gold bags couldn't make this any clearer. After Blondie's judged that Tuco has absorbed yet another lesson on the error of his ways, he emerges from hiding and shoots away the rope. Tuco lands directly on the gold and then we get a freeze frame in which each of the three characters is once again identified as good, bad and ugly. Leone certainly knew how to drive a point home.
It's not as though Leone didn't mix symbolism into his other spaghetti westerns. In A Fistful of Dollars the family that's been split apart by Ramon is clearly meant to be the Holy Family. Leone also throws in some mythological elements when he has Joe, Clint Eastwood's character, hidden in a coffin and carried in a wagon driven by a Charon-like figure (a coffin maker) to the Underworld (an abandoned mine shaft). There he finds safety and forges a magical shield (an iron breastplate), which he wears when he returns to the land of the living. Like any god his arrival on Earth is announced with thunder and lightning (several sticks of dynamite), and Ramon is defeated because his hero-like ability to hit a man's heart with every rifle shot can't beat Joe's magical shield.
I don't think Leone meant for any of the religious or mythological references in his westerns to be taken too seriously. He used these themes and symbols to give his stories a subliminal resonance and weight. Without these elements his films would be more stylish versions of standard American westerns. One proof of this is Once Upon a Time in the West, which feels less substantial than Leone's other westerns because it omits religious and mythological motifs. Instead we get a rather muddy plot that contains some anti-capitalist rhetoric and not much else. The anti-capitalist theme was a common element in a lot of Italian films at the time, and I'd guess that Bernardo Bertolucci's involvement in the script probably had a lot to do with that.
I may be deluded or off-base with some of my arguments about the religious content of GBU, but give it another watch and see if my thesis doesn't hold up. The two clips below make up the final shootout from the film and I think it proves my point(s). The second clip has bonus Hebrew sub-titles! Here endeth the lesson.
Here's the plot: an old goatherd living in rural Calabria dies and his spirit/soul/essence passes through a goat, a tree, and ends up as charcoal. Oh, and there's no dialogue. There's ambient sound, some barely audible background chatter, but no conversation. Clearly, this film isn't meant to appeal to the average filmgoer. This is an art film with a capital WTF? The film begins by following a decrepit goatherd in his daily routine.
We see him take his goats to pasture, bring them back to the scruffy,
hilltop village he lives in, and then go to bed in his spartan house. Just before bed each night he drinks a folk remedy of what looks suspiciously like ash. He
dies and a baby goat is born. We follow its brief life until it dies
under a tall pine, which is then cut down and brought to the village as
part of a festival. After the festival the tree is sold to some charcoal
makers and we watch the process of turning wood into charcoal. Finally,
the charcoal is taken to the village and sold as cooking fuel. The end.
The Circle of Life plot isn't what's remarkable about this film. There have been meditative, non-narrative arthouse films before this one. What sets this film apart is the sheer brilliance of its cinematography. Even though there is no dialogue or obvious story to hold our interest, the images in the film have their own stories to tell that completely capture our attention. And, in their own way, the images create a dialogue by asking us to figure out what's going on. The cinematographer is Paolo Benvenuti, who does an amazing job of framing shots and using locations that hold our attention all on their own. Every shot is rich in detail and information, as well as often being beautiful or striking. The plot description makes this film sound like a bit of snooze. How compelling is it watching an old man, goats, and charcoal production? In fact, everything we see in the film has moments of drama, comedy, and pathos, only it's all told to us visually.
For comparison's sake I'd recommend a viewing of War Horse (my review here) before seeing Le Quattro Volte. War Horse is a master class in bad cinematography, and by "bad" I don't mean out of focus or any other kind of technical error. War Horse confuses prettiness with great cinematography, and it uses every cheap and expensive trick to achieve its chocolate box beauty: lens filters are used to create more magical cloudscapes, exteriors are only filmed during the golden hours of the day, only the most eye-catching locations are used, and every object within the frame, from actors to tea cups, has been vetted for attractiveness. It's cinematography by way of the Neiman-Marcus catalogue.
Le Quattro Volte does not do pretty. The village that the story takes places in sits in a dramatic, picturesque location, but the village itself is unkempt and ramshackle. The citizens of the town are clearly real people, not one of them looking remotely like a model or actor. The exterior shots are taken at all times of the day, and there are no obvious attempts to juice the look of the film through lighting or filters. The cinematographer has simply worked hard to find the best shot composition for each location. One technique he uses that makes most every shot come alive is to put vanishing points, sometines more than one, into many of the shots. A lot of this film takes place outdoors, and Benvenuti uses roads, lanes and alleyways to create vanishing points that draw us into the images and hold us there. The most masterful sequence in the film is shot in a single take, the camera positioned high above a goat pen located on the edge of the village. The scene involves a frisky dog, an Easter procession and a delivery truck, and it's an amazing combination of choreography and cinematography.
A dialogue-free film about death and resurrection clearly doesn't have mass appeal, but it's gripping from start to finish, it looks fantastic, and if your main objection to foreign films is the annoyance of reading sub-titles, no worries.
The most pleasing thing about The Prone Gunman is how thoroughly Manchette deconstructs and warps the traditional crime thriller. One way he does this is to strip his novel right down to the studs. Characters are described in a sentence or two, the plot rushes forward constantly, there's a minimum of extraneous commentary or description, and the action is brutal, frequent and described in the bluntest terms. This is a thriller with all the window dressing stripped away, and once that's done the absurdities and cliches of the genre become very apparent. A lot of pulp crime novels from the 1950s and '60s were lean and tough (Richard Stark in his Parker novels took this style to a brilliant level), but Manchette adds a dash of existential despair to the mix that makes his novels something special. The previous Manchette novel I read was Fatale (review here), and in that one the deadly heroine eventually seems to crack up under the strain of being exposed to the scheming of the bourgeoisie. In The Prone Gunman the protagonist, Martin Terrier, has a more peculiar breakdown.
The plot is a carefully thought out collection of cliches. Terrier is a professional assassin working for a shadowy company or organization that may or may not be part of the French government. Terrier decides he wants to retire from the business and goes back to his hometown in the south of France where he hopes to reconnect with his teenage sweetheart. Not surprisingly, the company Terrier works for decides it doesn't want him to retire, it wants him dead. Terrier and his girlfriend, Anne, go on the run and the bodies start to pile up along with plot twists by the score. There's really nothing original in the story, except for Terrier's reaction once the twists and betrayals reach epidemic proportions. He becomes a mute. It isn't a ruse, he actually loses the will to speak after one rather painful betrayal. It's a bizarre development, but in a loopy way it makes sense. Heroes in this genre traditionally take a tremendous amount of mental and physical abuse; they're shot at and chased; live in fear of betrayal or discovery; suffer torture; live double lives; and are always looking over their shoulder. Somehow none of this seems to have any lasting effects on the hero. At the end of the novel they pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and walk into the sunset, all ready for their next adventure. Terrier has a nervous breakdown. Who wouldn't? Terrier has been exposed to all kinds of horrors, shocks and violence, and his reaction amounts to a declaration of existential fright at what's been happening to and around him. It's a startling plot twist, but it points out the absurdity of the mentally invulnerable action hero whose psyche can bear up under any amount of pressure.
Another cliche of the crime/spy thriller genre is that the hero must have a romantic or sexual partner. If it's a wife or girlfriend she usually exists in the story to be captured or threatened and thus complicate the hero's mission. Sometimes the female characters are just around for the sex, which gives the story some sexytime fun and confirms the hero's hetero status. But the one thing that's certain is that the hero will always be paired off with an attractive, even gorgeous, woman who will think he's just great in and out of bed. It's almost an ironclad rule for the genre; no chunky or spotty girls need apply. Manchette completely destroys this cliche. Terrier eventually loses his girlfriend because, well, he's a complete dud in the sack. It's a witty riff on one of the most tired conventions of the genre.
Manchette also has time to rubbish one of the sillier aspects of crime novels: the pointless obsession with technical details; in particular, the fascination with name-branding weaponry. Any crime or thriller writer worth his salt likes (insists) on giving his readers the names and specs for every gun that appears in the story. So when a hero or villain produces a weapon we're immediately told it's, say, a Heckler & Koch MP5 with flash suppressor using a 7.62mm round. Who cares? The important thing is that some guy is armed and dangerous. For all I know Heckler & Koch could be an Austrian ventriloquism act. Manchette itemizes every bit of weaponry and extends the cliche to name-branding weapon accessories. Weapon name-branding exists in thrillers to add some verisimilitude, but it seems ludicrous to add a dollop of reality to stories that are, by and large, as far-fetched as any fantasy novel. One example: the uber-successful Jack Reader thrillers (my review of Worth Dying For here) by Lee Child are a feast of tech specs, but the plots are relentlessly improbable.
The subversion of thriller cliches goes on right to the end of The Prone Gunman. Unlike the vast majority of thriller heroes, Terrier isn't allowed to walk off into the sunset or enjoy a warrior's noble death. He ends up brain-damaged, living in his hometown, a figure of fun for the patrons of the bar where he works as a waiter. It's the most inglorious possible finish for the hero of a thriller. At the very end we see that Terrier was nothing more than a tool, like a Heckler & Koch, used by his masters until he was broken, and then tossed away. If you have a deep love for the conventions of modern thrillers you might find this book a mite upsetting, but if you like to see literary tropes given a good kicking...enjoy.
Every second Saturday for the last few months I've been dropping by the Downsview Merchant's Market for lunch. Located in the northeast quadrant of Toronto, the market is a big ugly barn of a building that's filled with dozens and dozens of stalls selling all kinds of, well, crap. But more about that later. I go there for the food court. This isn't your average mall food court; there's no Harvey's, Manchu Wok, Tim Horton's or any of the other usual fast food suspects. The stalls in this food court all seem to have been bodged together with plywood, Bristol board, and kitchen equipment acquired from yard sales. The appeal of this food court is some of the best ethnic food you can get anywhere in Toronto. Name a region of the globe and there's a food stall here doing a superb job of representing its cuisine. Over the months I've enjoyed outstanding empanadas, jerk chicken, burritos, tarte tatin, a strange Hungarian pastry called a kurtos, and grilled Serbian cevapcici sausages the smell of which would make a statue salivate.
I was thinking about the market recently after seeing the new TV commercial for USA tourism. Much has been made of the fact that the spot shows a more ethnically-diverse America. What this means is that the creative brains behind the ad have finally started using one of the most common tropes in tourism promotion: multiculturalism. This time of year lots of TV and print ads appear pitching different cities, provinces, states and countries, and many of these ads will highlight their destination's ethnic diversity. The message seems to be, visit us and enjoy seeing people unlike yourself.
Toronto has been pitching its multiculturalism to tourists for a very long time now. Nothing wrong with that; we are, in fact, one of the most multicultural cities around. But what's interesting about ad campaigns like this is the disconnect between what could be called Tourist Multiculturalism and Actual Multiculturalism. The tourism version of multiculturalism in Toronto tends to be built around genteel, gentrified areas of the city that are, shall we say, multiculturally-flavoured. Tourists coming to Toronto are still being told to go to places like Kensington Market and Chinatown, both on Spadina Ave, Greektown on the Danforth, and Little Italy on College St. All these areas lost most of their ethnic character some time ago, but they're all agreeably designed environments for urban professionals and tourists. This is the face of Tourist Multiculturalism.
Actual Multiculturalism is found in places like the Downsview market. The vendors and customers are almost all immigrants, and the products in the stalls reflect the desire of the vendors to get one foot on the economic ladder. They're selling luggage, tube socks, jewellery, cheap clothing, DVDs, and lots and lots of SIM cards for cell phones. This stuff is all available other places that are more pleasant to visit and probably have better prices. But for people who've just arrived in Canada and have a desire to be their own boss, the market is step one on the road to being an entrepeneur. And their customers can feel comfortable speaking to a shop owner who shares their language.
The real multicultural face of Toronto is found in drab, scrappy strip malls and bunker-like flea markets in the least leafy and most pedestrian-unfriendly parts of the city. If you go out to Markham Rd. in Scarborough you'll find all kinds of Indo-Pakistani stores and restaurants, none of them catering to the tourist trade. Similarly, Yonge St. north of Finch is awash in Korean and Middle Eastern businesses that never turn up in any travel articles. The multiculturalism that turns up in tourism ad campaigns and guidebooks tends to be the pasteurized version of Toronto's heady mix of cultures. So if you find yourself in Toronto this summer, remember that the parts of the city that look the least appetizing are probably, as it were, the most appetizing.
War Horse proves that it takes a big talent to make a good film, and an even bigger talent to make a flaming wreck of a film. Steven Spielberg is the culprit. It's not as though he hasn't done this before; 1941, Always, and The Terminal were all wretched, but War Horse is Spielberg at his nadir.
The story is syrupy even by Spielberg's standards. Basically, Joey the wonder horse becomes the object of affection for all who come in contact with him. He's first owned by Albert, a teenage boy living in Devon. World War One commences and the horse is requisitioned for the military, and a cavalry officer falls hard for Joey. The cavalry officer unwisely charges some German machine guns and Joey ends up in the loving hands of a German private. He then comes into the possession of a charming young French girl before being reunited at the war's end with Albert, who takes him back to England.
Yes, it's a preposterous story, but it's part of a director's job to make the preposterous seem plausible, and Spielberg doesn't make us understand why everyone gets dewy-eyed over Joey. It's true that horses have always been beloved animals (there's a whole sub-genre of kids' lit devoted to them), but this story is in such a rush to gallop Joey and his owners through one cinematic set piece after another that we're completely baffled as to why people want this beast. The longer the film goes on the more ridiculous this affection seems. Of course, on a symbolic level the horse is supposed to represent beauty, peace, and home, and while that goes part of the way to explaining his appeal to his owners, it still doesn't excuse the clumsiness with which Spielberg handles the story.
This brings up Spielberg's great weakness as a director: at heart he's a creator of showstopping moments and sequences, not a director whose focus is always on the story at hand. When he's at his worst, Spielberg's first thought is how to make a shot or a sequence look glorious, not how it's going to advance the story or develop a character. And in Spielberg's world this means every shot has to look like it was taken on Planet Sumptuous. The first section of the film is set in Devon, and in Spielberg's Devon every landscape and interior looks like it could be eaten for dessert. When it rains in this Devon it rains clotted cream. Albert's family are supposed to be poor peasant labourers but they live in a thatched cottage that's so picturesque, so tastefully furnished, you wonder if they're interior designers who've come down in the world. The chocolate box look of this film never ends. The war in France, except for a few muddy bits in the trenches, looks great. And Planet Sumptuous appears to orbit two suns, which is handy for Steven because there's always a stunning-looking dawn or sunset to light every shot. The final scene in the movie features a sunset so fiery I was wondering if one of the suns had gone supernova.
The fussy, prettified, over-produced look of War Horse even extends to the actors. Apparently, Joey can't be owned by unattractive or ordinary-looking people. At the very least he must be owned by people who've done catalogue work for J. Crew. The acting is decent, even though a lot of the actors have to fight their way through West Country accents that give rise to memories of various Monty Python sketches. And none of the actors can compete against the mouthwatering set decoration and ravishing cinematography.
So much energy has been devoted to the look of this film no one, it seems, took a hard look at the script. It's just plain, old bad. The peasantry of Devon spout rural cliches Thomas Hardy would have rolled his eyes at, and the interlude with the French girl is sweetness on steroids. The final section of the film showing Joey's return to Albert doubles down on the silliness. Battle-hardened Tommies unite to get Albert his horse back, and the only way the whole thing could feel more ridiculous and sentimental is if a song and dance number broke out.
The only reason to watch this film is to see how artistically corrupting great success can be. There's simply no one who's going to tell Spielberg that he's going too far, and the result is a film that's simply rotten with self-indulgent flourishes. There is one good thing about War Horse: every third frame of it would make an excellent wallpaper for computer monitors.
