War Horse (w/ Chase Ables)

Eli (00:01.366)
Hello and welcome to the establishing shot a podcast where we do deep dives and two directors and their filmography's I am your host Eli Price and we are here on episode 101 of the podcast Had a great time last week on the hundredth episode, which I haven't recorded yet. So I'm just Just assuming we did but today we are picking back up in that last stretch of Spielberg's career and

in our Spielberg series, yeah, keep it on going with his second film by a few days of, yeah, The release was that close? Yes. Yeah, like four days, I think, after Tintin. Wow. Yeah. And so, yeah, War Horse, that's what we're going to be covering today. Excited to jump into that. I have a returning guest.

coming today to talk about it with me my brother-in-law chase abels is joining me how you doing jace? I'm good, yeah do you feel you feel up to the warhorse? I think so can you put your mind in the the mind of a horse? I don't want to put my mind in the mind of this horse for this but I think I can I don't have no forces yeah that's good

Yeah, we'll talk about that a little bit. yeah, had you on for a Spielberg episode. we've talked kind of about your intro to Spielberg and stuff. So I figured before we jump into things, I would just ask what you've watched recently that you really enjoyed. Maybe some recommendations to start the podcast off. Sure. Let's see. I haven't.

watched a ton of movies lately. I've been on a reading kick and the media that I've been watching has mostly been like TV, I can give some- TV is fine. Yeah, I can definitely give some TV recommendations. I can't think of the name of the lead creator, but two series by the same person that I really enjoyed were one called Scavengers Reign and another called

Eli (02:23.413)
on what's the pharmaceutical one called? Common Side Effects. Both are very, very good. Just kind of strange sci-fi animated series. Short, think they're like 12 episodes each. Very good. Okay. Yeah. Never heard of this. So that's cool. Sweet. Yeah, I've...

I've been catching up on a lot, as many as I can, 2025 movies, because in last week's episode, which I haven't recorded yet, I've been, I'm going to be covering my favorite of 2025 so far, or would have covered at this point when people are listening. But yeah, so that's kind of a, and you'll have already heard about that, so I won't get into that. yeah, let's...

Let's jump right into Warhorse. Sure. There's surprisingly a lot to talk about with it. Yeah. So from the beginning, starting at the beginning, you know, a very good place to start. Yes. As they say, late 70s, Michael Morpurgo, who wrote the book, he was a former school teacher turned farmer. He he met up with some guys at a pub.

One of them, the first guy he met was an older guy that had like an antique, he was like an antique seller or something and started just telling him stories about World War I. He was a veteran in World War I and this is in like the Devon area of England. So British guys. And they kind of like befriended a couple of other guys. One was also a vet.

And the other was too young to enlist, like was would tell about like the selling of local horses to the army and stuff. And so he just like has all these like stories rolling around in his head. He does some like research of his own and kind of discovers this story within the story of the war, which is kind of centered around like these horses. And he finds out that there was approximately four million.

Eli (04:46.381)
horses in World War One on or near the battlefield that died. Wow. Yeah. Just that died? Just that died. Wow. Yeah. And yeah. And then after that, as you see in the movie, many of the surviving animals were sold to like French butchers and sold as food. Yeah. And so even the ones that survived. Even the ones that survived didn't survive the war.

So, and I mean, you know, that last part is like, just kind of like a necessity of post-war. You've got to eat, you've got to feed people. so, the- And you've got nothing to feed horses. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so it's kind of, that's less like sad and more of an inevitability. The former is what's really sad.

I I guess it is It is sad. Inevitability is going to still be sad. It's sad in a different way. Tragic. Yeah. But yeah, so he's got all these stories and research rolling around in his head and yeah, writes this book. People keep saying children's book when you hear about it. I listened to the book on audiobook. I would say it's like a...

When I hear children's book, I just think like for like all children, but this is a little bit like there's a little bit like just kind of like the movie. There's a little bit of material that's more mature. And so and it's a novel. It's like a children's novel. So probably like late elementary is what I would imagine when you would start later elementary, early middle school, probably something like holes with a giver. Yeah, exactly. It's probably shorter than those.

But yeah, he wrote this book. 1982 it's published. know, Fictional Tale of One of the Horses. If you watch the movie and have it, did you happen to listen to the book? I didn't get a chance. No, well I didn't get, I'm sure I got a chance, but I guess I didn't prioritize my listening time for it. I mean, it's fine. it's really like, so I think the audiobook I listened to was like

Eli (07:09.261)
three hours and something so it's not very long and really like if you've seen the movie you've pretty much Seen what would be in the book? Okay, Yeah, it's it's fine. The book is fine. I thought it's the thing that's You can see like the translation to the movie. The movie is not like

The movie follows the horse, but isn't in the POV of the horse necessarily. The book is written from the POV of the horse. like, the thoughts and stuff are the horse's thoughts. Is he like talking with his horse friends? He doesn't talk to people. He just observes. Even to other horses? No. He just observes. He talks about like, how he relates to other horses, but he doesn't like, there's not like a

quote in dialogue between horses. Okay, cool. There's quoted dialogue between people that he's hearing talk about things. But yeah, but yeah, it's so it's from the POV of the horse, but like, in I guess a realistic way, if as much as that can be, it, it's not in a super anthropomorphized mentally kind of way. Yeah, not really. It's just kind of like

as if he had a human brain being able to observe and write down all of what he was observing. And that was the extent of his human brain. So, yeah, the book was a big success when it was published. He didn't expect it. I think I remember there was like a forward to the book that he wrote for some like 40th and

Anniversary edition that I listened to or something and he talked about like being surprised at how big it it blew up You know, didn't nobody really expected it to do what it did. So it was very popular and then Down the road. Well, he so Morpurgo had tried to write a few screenplays that never I guess got like picked up by anybody and so those kind of fell through but

Eli (09:25.357)
later down the road in 2007, the National Theatre in London submitted a stage play to him. so he was like surprised they had the end of stage play. has it written for there to be two, you know, for the main two horses. There's like two life size puppets like horse puppets.

Did you get a chance to watch I watched a trailer I didn't know yeah so when we if you're if you've if you're listening and you want to see it you can just search like Warhorse stage play trailer and you can like see hmm one You'll have to do it later. I do. Yeah, I I forgot you had told me about that. I wish I had now Yeah, it's actually really cool like the I can see because the stage play was like big I think it won some Tony's even

and it was a big success and like when you watch the just the trailer, you know and see these like there's there's probably like Two to four people operating these life-size horse puppets about two of the people kind of like in it and then like people kind of on the outside that are like Moving the head and stuff. Okay. Yeah, and so like and you can see the people like it's not like

They're trying to hide that, that it's being operated by people. But it looks really cool and the movements have, from the little you can see in the trailer anyway, they have that emotionality that horses have in their movements in the puppet. It's pretty impressive. I feel like it would probably be a really enjoyable stage play to see.

Yeah, so that was that first performance was in October of 2007 and it was like I said a big success and 2009 is where we start getting to the movie stuff Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall who? Maybe I did know this and forgot but they Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall are like producers on ton of spilt work stuff And I didn't even realize until I was researching for this they they're married. Okay

Eli (11:49.806)
Have they been the whole time? For a while, yeah. Okay. Yeah, I just, you know, they have two different last names. They just didn't change their last name. And so it just never occurred to me that they were married. But when I was doing my research, was like Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall went with their family. And I was like, their family, that's not plural. And so I looked it up and I was like, they're married. I just like, maybe I did read this at some point and forgot. I don't know.

That's pretty common in show business just because right how hard it is to change your name on all of the paperwork Yeah for sure and But yeah, they went and saw the stage play with their family loved it and then they were noticing like their kids reactions to it and That that's when they kind of were like, okay, this could be a movie, you know, and so Yeah, Kennedy

And Marshall, they're part of DreamWorks. And so three months after that, they had already acquired the rights for the book and the play with DreamWorks. And Spielberg, they're starting to try to get screenplays written for it, optioning out to writers. Spielberg, at that point, was wrapping up 1010 production and moving into post-production.

and so Yeah, I can see there being a lot of post-production. Yes, that's that they came out close Yeah, that episode came out today. So I'm sure you haven't had a chance to listen to it yet. No, but yeah, there's like two years of post-production and so at the at the This point he's he's like wrapped up the additional shooting. So, you know, they've done their main shooting they've probably started on some of the post and then he

you know, went and did some additional shooting, you know, motion capture with the actors to get what else he needed. He wrapped that up, and then he's just like, it's out of his hands at that point. He has to like, see things and okay things, but like, it's the animation studios doing all the work at that point. It's Peter Jackson's way to digital doing all the work. so, so really, and Peter Jackson is doing a lot of that post stuff with his,

Eli (14:15.105)
with his company. Very collaborative movie. Yeah, overseeing all that stuff. so, yeah, so he doesn't have a whole lot to do. So, Kathleen Kennedy tells him about this stage play. So he flies over to England to see it in London and loves it, very moved by it. And yeah, he's immediately on board. He originally was just gonna produce it.

But I think pretty quickly decided like okay. I'm gonna direct it which happens periodically throughout his career like he's just gonna produce something and then Eventually decides like no, I think I'll direct it It's a it's a not a like huge trend with Spielberg, but it happens. Yeah, it definitely happens They had a script by a guy named Lee Hall who? Had the bunny trail there is he had written

I don't know if you also directed, but definitely wrote the movie Billy Elliot, which I haven't seen. Which starred the guy who played Tintin in Tintin. so there's like, there's a little bit of a bunny trail connection there. But Spielberg didn't really like the Leigh Hall script. I didn't really see what he didn't like about it in my research, but he didn't really go for it whole lot.

He gives it to, which I think Lee Hall still has writing credit. So I don't think they like scrapped it totally. They just did a rewrite with Richard Curtis. He sends it to Richard Curtis. I don't know if you recognize his name, but he's a writer director of like British sentimental comedies. Four Weddings and a Funeral. Actually is probably his biggest one. Which I haven't seen either of those.

I've seen bits of Four Weddings and a Funeral. I have not seen Love Actually. Yes, I actually have not seen that. Yeah, so he gives it to him. He's got, you know, I guess he's thinking like he has like a British sensibility and what you kind of need for this movie because it's kind of that British sentimental sensibility.

Eli (16:42.181)
the book because it's written by a British guy sure so it's very it's it's very British yeah all the way through yes for sure got the kind of there's kind of like that British grit that runs through it hmm like you know just thinking about it as we're talking about it like there is kind of like you know that you know this is World War one but you you

There's a lot there's so much World War two content and that's always like a big thing with like the British people like were tough and like Grated out like yeah, you think of like Dunkirk and stuff and you know, they're they're really working for the people that are in the war So there's definitely some of that in this movie too. I think there is yeah. Yeah, so I can see I Can see why you would want maybe a British writer But yeah, he hopes to stick close to the book the new script

still centered on Joey, obviously, because that's the movie we watched. It's centered on Joey. He's the horse. Yeah, he's the war horse. But it gives Albert a little bit more of a prominent role. Then the book, it's like, Albert is out of the pic, once Albert's gone, he's gone, and he comes back at the end.

You're not getting flashes to Albert wondering how the horse is doing and reading letters and stuff. Yeah. Yeah, not really. You're literally, it's in the horse's point of view. So you're not jumping to anyone else's point of view in the book. but, you know, for cinematically, you kind of like need that to keep the character in mind and stuff. So, yeah, they add a few things. They change.

a things like they add the whole father war veteran injury pennant thing. okay. They add all that stuff to kind of give some weight to that character and that relationship a little bit more. I feel like they did a good job with that. Like there's definitely like there's more like strife between son and dad in the book.

Eli (18:58.837)
And this one, there's more of a strife and resolution to it. There's more of a full arc to that character relationship in the movie than in the book, really. And then they also added the German deserters are not in the book. They kind of added those characters as a different way to get the horses to the French farm sort of thing.

In the book, just like, the Germans have the horses, they are pulling like basically ambulance stretchers. that is like, so when the Gunther I think is his name, the German kid, is like that's what he wants to use them for. That is what they do in the book. So there's probably like historicity to that. Probably. But in the

They just like end up on that French farm and then they just leave them there And then another regiment comes through and then takes them So gotcha so in a sense that is kind of what happens but in the movie they like hide the horses from them and stuff and Lose them later. So, you know there there's a little bit more drama and stuff with that added in the in the movie which I think to good effect I think there's a degree to which

you know, when you have a short childlike children's novel, like you can kind of add more meat. You can, yeah. To a story when you make it into a movie. Like have you ever read Fantastic Mr. Fox? I did, yeah. It's very bare bones. It really is. And to me it's like the movie's kind of better.

A lot more meat. does emotional depth to to the story And there's a there is a bit of that in this too More meat, I think the book is probably like just as Emotionally affecting at certain points as the movie is But like when you when you read the book You definitely get that Spielberg sensibility

Eli (21:23.883)
Like you read the book and you're like, okay, yeah, I can see Spielberg directing this. has that kind of like same emotional sensibility that Spielberg has in his like kind of like adventure child leaning movies. Right. Yeah. So like kind of that, that E.T.ness or that. Yeah. It kind of has that sensibility in the book. But yeah, they have the screenplay within three months, really.

of green lighting it and then within six months they're like in pre-production getting ready to go so they really like they're really like getting this thing moving the crew as I as I said Katherine Kennedy and Spielberg are the producers the left out Frank Marshall I guess on this one but based on like the play that much yeah he was taking care of the kids I guess

Yeah, based on the novel by Michael Mordpurgo from 1982. The play was written by Nick Stafford in 2007 is when that came out. Screenplay credits to Lee Hall and Richard Curtis, as I said. And then, yeah, we've got a lot of like returners for this one. This is kind of like the typical Spielberg guys. Janusz Kaminski is the DP. Mitch Dooman doing some camera operating, which he's done in the past.

Michael Kahn is the editor. John Williams does the music Stuart Wilson and Gary Rydstrom do the sound Those are typical guys Rick Carter doing the production design Set decorating do Lee Sandale Sandales Haven't seen that name before so there's your new guy hair and makeup isn't really like one of those that's like

pretty neither that's ever like very consistent so john henry gordon does here low lowest bar well does the makeup i don't know those names here i could see that being something you're more likely to hire a location yet yet probably but costumes joy on a johnston is back she's done a lot of recent stuff with them and very good costume designer and very good costume designing in this movie

Eli (23:45.352)
Yes, absolutely. That's definitely one of the points we'll hit. Neil Korbold does the special effects, which is mostly explosions and war stuff. Yeah. directors in Adam Somner, William Dodds, and Emma Horton. Rob Inch is the stunt coordinator, so he's got some work to do in this one.

and Dr. David Kenyon is one, he's at least the military advisor that is in the special features, so I don't know if they had more, they probably had more than just him, but he was the one willing to get in front of the camera and do the talking head interviews, so I wrote his name down. There's some other people that'll come up as we get into stuff, like they had some like Humane Society people there and stuff for the horses and whatnot, so.

We'll talk about them later. Cast. The cast, it's a fun cast, I think. It is a cast. What did you think about the cast? Were there any standouts to you?

I don't know that there were necessarily any standouts in terms of just performances. every time there was a new scene I was like, hey, this person. It was just a constant surprise of like, I was not expecting them to pop up in this movie. Yeah, yeah, for sure. There's definitely some big ones that pop up. And it's very episodic. So you have some big faces. Well, a lot of them are like big faces now, but weren't necessarily at the time too. And they just pop up and then they're gone.

There, you don't see them again. Yeah, one of things he did was he hired actors of the same nationality as the characters they'd be playing, even though the whole movie's in English. He didn't have English people doing French accents and that sort of thing. He hired Germans for the Germans. The people that were talking on screen, obviously.

Eli (25:53.678)
tons of British extras. sure. yeah, yeah that's kind of how you went about hiring, which I thought was cool. So all the accents, pretty authentic. Yeah. The horses, so there were, I think there was like around 30 total horses in the movie. there were like 11 horses that were Joey. Sure. Yeah.

And so there's one lady was saying there were eight adult horses that played Joey, two teen kind of horses and then one yearling, I guess for the beginning. They all played Joey. The main horse, there is like one main Joey horse. And his name was, I think his full like horse name was Finders Key, but they just called him Finder. So a lot of times when they're talking about the Joey horse, they,

talk about finder so I get the sense that he's like all like the main stuff is him and then I guess a lot of the like I guess he has a bunch of like stunt kind of like do stuff for him when it doesn't have to be him being like real emotional and stuff it's funny talking about horse actors but okay yeah I mean he is it's a it's job yeah he's doing the job acting they had to

train for the movie, you know? So, Top Thorn was played by a horse named George. Hey! So, good horse name, I think. That is a good horse name. Yeah. think horses are like one of the only animals where I'm like, okay, you can name them people names. Like, I always find it weird when there's like a dog named Jessica, but like a horse named Jessica, I'd be like, okay, you know. It fits a lot more, I don't know why that is.

Any ideas on that? You grew up around horses. Are they like more like us emotionally than dogs are maybe? Maybe, yes. And there's also just a sense of you're not going to infantilize a horse at all. Sure. Even if you feel warmth and affection towards your horse, you're not. It could kill you. Yes. I guess a dog could too, but not.

Eli (28:19.789)
The dog is gonna kill you if a dog's gonna kill you it's gonna be on purpose if a horse is gonna kill you it could very well be That's true. That's true a lot more respect for the horse. Yeah, so it can be named George or Jessica Yeah, so that's the horse actors the people actors start with Jeremy Irvine who played Albert to Naricot Originally I heard somewhere that originally he had wanted Eddie Redmayne

Okay, for that part who was a bit older Than yeah at the time but but kind of like not well known yet He hadn't really been in anything huge yet But he did want kind of an unknown face for Albert and Someone who could play both 15 and 21 years old. So even though red main was a little older at that point he was still kind of

He has that young face. So he probably could have pulled that off, but I think this guy did, Irvine did good. He did. Yeah. They did have like months of unsuccessful auditions before they settled on Irvine. He was a 19 year old British actor with like basically a blank resume. He hadn't really been in anything. So I think he did pretty good. I think he did too. Yeah. It's not like he didn't like blow me away or anything, but

I mean, I don't think he did anything bad or wrong either, so. No, and he carried the emotion well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Especially like, um, he has like that wondrous look in his eyes that he pulls off for a little, which is like key for a Spielberg kid, you know? Like seeing the horse for the first time or, you know, I guess like even at the end, like being blindfolded.

and seeing the horse with your hands. Also something in like the tone of his voice that really like has that affect of wonder, guess. Yeah, I can see that. Yeah. Yeah. He's yeah, he definitely like has the Spielberg. I don't know, something. Sentimentality. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Eli (30:47.211)
I think he did good. He talked about having read the book with his mom at like eight or nine years old. So he was familiar with the material and stuff too. So that's cool. Yeah, I mean, he surrounded this kid though with prestige actors. Some people that are like more recognizable than others, but all of them like very like well-respected actors. Like Peter Mullen isn't a guy that you hear about all the time, but still like...

respected actor like he's been in a good bit of stuff, you know, yeah Peter yeah, he mullen plays the dad Ted Naricot, right? Emily Watson plays plays Rose Naricot. I Really thought both of them were very good. They were the Peter Mullins I think like Pull it off like the the drunk British guy very well

It's like the way he like slurred his words. It was like I was like, this guy's good, you know, I Really believe he's drunk. Maybe he was I don't know maybe Really got into character. Yeah, and Emily Watson I think like she just has that like Sad deterministic face that's like perfect for this mom. Mm-hmm

I know that like I guess some roles she leans more into like the strong willness than like the sadness But like in this where you she you have to have both like she's like perfect for it. I yeah I Think it's her eyes. It is. Yeah, you're right. She just has like something in her eyes that just feels like a little bit sad like a little bit Longing I guess

she constantly looks like she's either about to like burst out into the largest smile or break down crying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or get on to Ted for buying the wrong horse. Or tell off David Thewlis, who plays Lion's landlord. Another great casting. He plays a Weasley landlord perfectly.

Eli (33:13.587)
The guy who plays his son is Robert Inns, plays David Lyons, and he played Albert in the stage play. cool. Yeah, I thought that was cool. And yeah, I thought he was good. He's there at the beginning for a couple of scenes and then shows up later in the war with them. Right. I think he's like a good little like mini foil for Albert a bit that has some, you know,

Redemption between the reconciliation I guess later. Yeah, pretty good Yeah other guys so You have a few Gary Leiden Plays side Easton and Matt mill and Andrew Easton. That's like the dad's best friend and the son's best friend. Okay? Kind of like they don't really stand out, but they don't like ruin anything either. They're just they're there and they do their job like

you know, Ted, you fool, that kind of stuff. And then, yeah, then you get to some big, big names, Tom Hiddleston playing Captain James Nichols. I didn't expect to see him pop up. I hadn't really like studied the cast list before I watched. hadn't either. And so like when he popped up, I was like, it's Tom Hiddleston. And then and then up.

Uprights Benedict Cumberbatch who plays Major Jamie Stewart Didn't expect Benedict Cumberbatch to show up either. Yeah, so that was really cool Cumberbatch really Had it hadn't been in anything big yet. He was he was like Spielberg saw had discovered him kind of in British TV Because Spielberg, you know, of course Spielberg is watching British TV because he watches everything

Hiddleston I'm not sure where he had like discovered Hiddleston that didn't really come up but Yeah, they Spielberg Spielberg said he saw him as a reincarnation of Errol Flynn Just like man. That's high praise that is which I haven't seen much Errol Flynn I've seen the adventures of Robin Hood and that might be it. But he's like I don't know. Have you seen that? Yeah. Yeah, he's like

Eli (35:41.617)
I mean, he's like a captivating movie star just from watching that one role. Like I get the feeling that he's probably like that in all of his movies. Like, yeah, I could see that. Yeah. I don't disagree with him about Tom. I don't know that Tom Hiddleston has had the career to let that shine, but I feel like he has that quality. Right. So I think Avengers came out in 2011, too.

So earlier that year he had been in that. And I guess probably a year or two before that would have been Thor. Thor, Dark World. Was Dark World before? No, just the first one. I don't think it had any sort of subtitle. Yeah, yeah, I guess so. Yeah, know you, sorry. The second one didn't come out before. I feel like he plays a more prominent role in the second one. In Dark World as, what's his face?

can't even think of the character in this moment. think I had it... Loki? Yeah, Loki. I had it a second ago, but then when I needed to say it, didn't come out. Yeah, I think Loki plays... I don't know. Those... I don't know. Yeah, those two Thor movies kind of blur together for me. Yeah. But yeah, mean, he's definitely... for sure he's in the Avengers earlier that year, which I'm almost like positive that was 2011.

would have been summer 2011. think you're right. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, so he, he like,

They would have probably filmed this before that had come out. So if that was like his big breakout, this would have kind of followed that. I guess it wouldn't have known that that was coming. I mean, I guess you kind of did. Like they've been building to the Avengers for a while. But yeah, he caught up. Hylston says they had a chat because he's British.

Eli (37:49.454)
have a talk, you have a chat. course. He said they talked about Peter O'Toole as you as you do, of course, if you're British and an actor, I guess. Everything British coming out in their conversation. And then Spielberg asked him if he could ride horses, of course. And he was like, yes, I can. I have. And, you know, it's kind of like one of those things that I got the same feeling from Cumberbatch of like

Yes, I have written. Let me go brush up, you know. But I mean, they arrived really well in the movie. They do. Yeah. The third the third member of that little trio was Patrick Kennedy, who plays Lieutenant Charlie Waverly, who he worked with Spielberg on in the movie Munich. OK. So so he had worked with them before. So.

That's kind of like the trio in that section of the movie is those three with, you know, obviously Cumberbatch and Hiddleston being like the main two because they're the ones on Joey and Top Thorne. Right. But the other guy, like he has some, know, he has the moment with the hat. That's kind of funny. You know, what do you think about this hat? Yeah. And, you know, Hiddleston as Nichols is kind of like, I don't think you're going to be worried about the hat.

But yeah, so that part ends, and we'll talk about all the sequences later. And then you get to David Cross as Gunther and Leonard Caro as Michael. Those are the two German deserter kids, which I think they did well. They did. I'm assuming they kind of just did some, they didn't really talk about how they cast all of these characters in the special features and stuff.

I'm assuming they just did some like casting calls for Germans in Britain or maybe they did fly them in, I don't know. Maybe. But yeah, they were good, I thought. Then you moved to the French farm with Niels Erestrup as the grandfather. He was great. He was. And I recognize him and I cannot place him. He's in a lot of stuff. I looked at his page.

Eli (40:14.647)
He's in a lot of stuff. He was in A Prophet, which was a Jacques Audiard movie. I mean, he's a French actor, so a lot of it is French. He was in that Ad Eternity's Gate movie about Vincent Mingo with Willem Dafoe. I bet that's what I'm thinking of. Because I've seen that. I don't necessarily remember him from it, but he's in it. Looks like he plays Madman.

Yeah, I mean he's he's in a bunch of French stuff and he's in some American stuff, but Not as not a lot of stuff. I recognize I recognize like some other directors But not necessarily the movies But yeah he also like This is what he looks like younger too. yeah, he's if you want to see on if you're watching

There he is. But that's great podcasting, showing something to people that may or may not be watching. Yeah, so back to the cast. So he, I thought he was great. He was one of my favorite parts of the movie, I think. The grandfather in the book is very like, a very like emotionally affecting character. And like, he really embodied that, I think, for the role.

you know when he in his main section and then when he pops up at the end to yeah man so good and then Celine Buckins plays Emily the granddaughter she was a 13 year old Belgian actress so yeah she was good yeah yeah and you know Spielberg Spielberg just used to working with kids and so yeah yeah

is good at getting performances out of them that are good and should you have a good one? for sure. Then you have the next section with the cannon pulling. So the main guy there is Nicholas Bro, which cool last name, his last name is Bro, B-R-O. I know a Nicholas Bro that Bro is not spelled B-R-O. French. Yeah. That's funny. Well, it's not him, it's a different Bro.

Eli (42:42.273)
who plays Friedrich, the crazy Friedrich, know, whispering to the horses and stuff. He's the main guy in that. There's another guy, Rainer Bock, who had a pretty, you know, he's been in a bunch of stuff too that played Brandt, who I think is, I think he's the other like main German commander in that section. That's like,

yelling at everybody and stuff and I think he's the one that ends up like shooting Top Thorn. If I'm remembering right, Friedrich can't do it. Right, okay. Yeah, it's been like actually like a couple weeks since I watched this at this point. So I was trying to remember. Yeah, so that's that section. Then of course you have No Man's Land where you have some of the other guys come back but then you have

Toby Kebbell who plays Geordie the soldier the one the puns British guy Yeah, the Brit from the guy that goes out from the British side and then Henrik Schoenemann Who plays Peter the German soldier who goes out? those guys were really good. Yes That That's like we'll talk about this more extensively later, but that section feels like a short film that like

Speaks like in that short little scene like what the whole movie is trying to do to me. Yeah Like I could watch just that on its own and like love it but yeah Wrapping things up you have Eddie Marzen who plays sergeant fry who's kind of the guy in charge there and the in the kind of At the end of the war camp kind of thing right where you know

Albert is blind and whatnot. And then Liam Cunningham plays the army doctor in that section. So those are the two other main characters in that section that show up. And yeah, cameo by Michael Morpurgo and his wife. They're in the scene with the first horse auction where Ted buys Joey. He's wearing a top hat and she's in a purple dress beside him. So that's fun. That is fun.

Eli (45:09.439)
That's the cast. That was the only cameo. No Spielberg's daughter in this one. She shows up sometimes. You could call the actor that played... What's the kid's name? Robert Ems. Yeah, that play. Yeah, can't remember his character's name either. David.

Their names aren't really that important. No. It's just, they kind of like, I guess in that sense it is like, From the horse's perspective. horse's perspective. It's a person. Well, like, the cool thing about it is like, I can say like, oh, the German character that did this in that section of the movie, and like, you can picture what he looks like, what his like, demeanor towards the horse was.

and like other people and like you get like you know everything about the character without like knowing the character's name which I think is kind of like a strong point of this movie is like there's like there's so many characters that run through but they all feel pretty like well-formed even though you're like running through them fairly quickly which is like it's it's a something that like Spielberg

does really well is like quick character development. Like when he's on. There's sometimes where he doesn't do it well in some movies, but I feel like a lot of times he's very good at doing a scene where you learn everything you need to know about the character. he does that really well in this movie, I think. He does. But yeah, production starts August 6, 2010.

For the scope of the screenplay, which is like, you know, you watch the movie beginning to end, like, they did a lot in this movie. It's only $70 million budget. For the scope of that screenplay is actually a pretty tight budget. That is. Especially like for Spielberg. But he's worked with small budgets before and got a lot done. you know, the indie movies probably are the best example of

Eli (47:35.16)
like doing a lot with a little. But yeah, location wise, I mean, like, it doesn't get a whole lot better than some of these locations. Sure. The first place they started in August was in Dartmoor, which is in the southwest of England. There's a couple of reasons that, like, when I was like, I wonder if Chase would do this with me, then it later hit me of like,

Chase would be perfect for this because you've been, you did like a backpacking trip across England. No, didn't, didn't make it to Dartmoor, but you've to plenty of places a lot like Dartmoor. Yeah, I figured. And you also grew up with horses. Yeah. So you can speak to that as well. Chase and my wife grew up riding horses. Not really like a farm, like, no, but pasture. Yes.

Few acres of pasture little barn. It's more so yeah But yeah, so yeah, perfect. But yeah, I mean the morph so Spielberg said he was not prepared for the he caught it the beautiful desolation of the moors Yeah, and this is something that I learned that I guess I I just have never Read much or learned or knew much about the I know about the morphs cuz I

I've read the Bounds of Baskerville and seen other British stuff where the Moors is mentioned, but I didn't realize that it's basically these huge areas of deforestation where the trees never grew back. I just had no idea. Which is kind of sad, but also the results are pretty beautiful. They are beautiful. Yeah, I don't even know, do you know when they were deforested? Was it like...

Um Middle ages or something or no more Well, I guess Middle ages is vague kind of medieval. Yeah Yeah, kind of I think I I'm not sure but yeah, I didn't know if you know I don't know so if you don't know I think like

Eli (49:52.878)
kind of progressively through like 13th to 16th century. Yeah. Kind of, yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's, like, like pre pre industrial, but still not like super far back. Yeah. When they were still needing a lot of wood, I'm assuming. yeah. For things. Yeah. For, for everything. Everything. Houses, vehicles.

Yeah. Carriages, the war machine. Constant wars with France. Yeah. wars with France. Yeah. And finally together here in this one. Yeah. Working together for once. Yeah. I mean, so like, what is your perspective on like, I guess, like the beauty and landscape of England? What are some like?

Just stand out things that you think were captured well in the movie.

Eli (50:58.411)
the rocky hillsides, that particular old-fashioned type of architecture where everything's kind of built into the land and the thatch roofs and the stone buildings and everything. It's surprising once you get out into the countryside how much of that is still the case. And it's surrounded by modern stuff now, but everything is still in use and it's cool.

The weather yeah, yeah The unpredictable constant changing weather yes Yeah, and Spielberg talked about how like the forecast was obviously regularly rainy and they would be watching the he would just be watching like the way the clouds were moving and When things would like change all of a sudden he would be like guys everybody like

move over here, we're going to, you know, page whatever of the script, we're gonna shoot this now. And so they were like constantly like trying to like adjust to the weather to get shots of something where it was supposed to be rainy or something like where like it wasn't, you know, they were just like on their toes for all that stuff, which I think makes sense. The quote I wrote from Spielberg where the clouds were as dramatic as our movie.

Yeah, the Moor's beautiful. The house, the Narakot house was like some old ruins that they kind of, it was like very like, dilapidated and ruins basically. And they kind of built it back up to be the farmhouse. That's cool. That's really cool. Yeah. So I don't think the interiors were...

I don't know that the interiors were shot actually in that. They did like, they ended their shooting with like five days of interiors, because there's just like barely any interiors in the movie. So just built some sets and... Yeah, probably back in... I guess they were in England so they might have used the London studio that Spielberg's used a lot, that George Lucas used to. I can't think of the name of it right now but... I know what you're talking about. Yeah.

Eli (53:23.219)
Or it might have been, I didn't really look up what studio they went to. They might have went back to LA. I have no idea. But it's, if you want to know, then you can go to the IMDB page, scroll down to locations and see for yourself. I usually do that myself so that I can tell people on the podcast, but I didn't this time.

The village that they used was a little village called Castle Calm. didn't really, all they added was like the old signage and whatnot to it. That's just how it looks. It's where they do like the horse auction and when Ted is like selling Joey to Tom Hiddleston and...

Yeah, that's like the little village there and Spielberg was like asking people asking like I guess the people that they were Getting permission from like it's just like a tourist place and they're like no Just this is just the village So it is Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, did you see a lot of places that looked like that when you were there some sure? Yeah. Yeah Yeah Did you see anything on the studios?

yes.

Eli (54:53.485)
Twicombe Studio in Greater London. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. So not the one that he's used in the past because I don't recognize that name. But it does make sense. They're already there. So why wouldn't you do it at a studio in London? But yeah, so Castle Calm was the village shot really almost entirely in the countryside. This movie. So really, Kathleen Kennedy in the

Special Features was just talking about how like nowadays, even back in 2011, it was like extremely rare to shoot in almost entirely exteriors. Just like extremely, extremely rare. And it's really like an old fashioned way of filmmaking. I mean, the big names that you can kind of see influence here.

Not necessarily with British countryside, but with just shooting in a lot of exteriors would be like John Ford, obviously. And then David Lean too. Did a lot of like, I mean just that old fashioned, mostly exteriors, lots of extras. Just that very old fashioned Hollywood film, or I guess in David Lean's case, London filmmaking.

But yeah, a large portion of it was shot on the estate of the Duke of Wellington. Okay. They opened up their land. There was like a talking head of him talking about some historical horse that was buried on the property. was like, I'm not writing this down, but cool. Yeah, they had thousands of beautiful acres that were open to them to use there.

So that they shot like the Calvary Charge there, the German camps, the like the French countryside windmill and all that kind of stuff was shot on the Duke of Wellington's estate. So he's got a gorgeous estate. He does. I mean, he is the Duke of Wellington. So for the cannonball pole sequence, it was shot somewhere around somewhere called Bourn Woods.

Eli (57:18.893)
I don't really know exactly where that is, I'm assuming it's somewhere probably around Dartmoor and the Duke of Wellington's estate. Probably. I'm sure they're not traveling all over England. Probably not. But and then they use for No Man's Land, they used an abandoned airfield in Surrey. Hey. So yeah. That works. Yeah. And then, yeah, of course, I already said five days in the studio for exteriors and

Yeah, ended shooting in October 2010. I think it was like a 63 day shoot, which is a really fast shoot for a movie, like I said, of this scope. It does help that like they just used England as a stand in for like any European location. They didn't like go to France for the French countryside. But yeah, it.

So that probably helped, but yeah, still very fast paced on set. Yeah, we already talked about the weather. Nearly 6,000 extras used throughout the movie. I'm not surprised. 30 horses, I think I already mentioned that. Lots of crowd shots. Yeah, yeah. So there was like one extra feature.

that was like a few minutes of one of the extras just talking about stuff, which you rarely get, you rarely get extras talking about things, but he's like one of those guys that's an extra a lot, it seemed like. Because he's talking about like, there were some days where there was like 250 to 300 extras in a scene, but there was like a core group of like 100 extras that he was a part of that.

that were like all throughout the movie. And they played both British soldiers and German soldiers and I would assume like people in the village and that sort of thing. so they did, he was saying most of them did their own like research on going to museums and reading books and stuff about the sorts of people they would be playing. So that was fun. Like I can see like having a lot of fun.

Eli (59:39.278)
has an extra, you know, on a Spielberg movie. Just getting into your role and yeah. Yeah. So that guy definitely was into his role. you know, he got to be on the special feature. So I'm sure he was excited about that. Oh, I bet. Yeah. On set, obviously some scenes pretty emotional. One of the things that stood out was Benedict Cumberbatch talking about the Calvary Charge scene.

which is a very like emotional, it's like a pivotal part of the movie. And he talked about by the third shoot of that scene, he was like having to like hold back tears. Like he was just caught up in like the emotion of it. Like I guess like the devastation of it I guess was getting to him being a part of it. And so I thought that was.

It's always fun to hear, not fun, but it's interesting to hear stories of just how the emotion that you're trying to portray for people watching the movie also happens while you're like...

acting it out like you know it just you're pretending and acting but like you get in that state and it's like affecting to you in the way that it would have been for the people you're playing yeah it's just a very like interesting part of acting where you know in your head you know you're pretending and for you know lack of a better term sure but like but it's still real

It's just like that kind of like old thought that sometimes like, you know, fiction is just as true if not truer than nonfiction. What you're pretending to do is just as real in your head as... Yeah. You know. Or like the emotions and like the truths being portrayed are just as true even though it's fiction. And also like if you're an actor just physically putting yourself in that space and...

Eli (01:01:55.434)
acting out the motion of it. yeah, yeah. Yeah, and that's like, that's one thing that's come up in this recent like stretch of Spielberg's career because you know, CGI and all that is starting to blow up. And so you start to hear when you watch, you know, when you start getting into like the 2000s and stuff, and you start watching the special features of those movies, you start to hear actors talk about, you know,

Love being on the Spielberg set because you're in a real space and like you're interacting with a real set Like you go back to like his films of like the 70s and 80s early 80s. You don't really You don't hear actors talk about that stuff because like yeah, it's just a given. Yeah but then you start moving into the 2000s and especially, know the 20 now starting in the 2010s like it's a big deal actors really appreciate that

So they talk about it in the special features, but But yeah, I mean being in that space and Like it looking like a battlefield. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I can see that being There it's probably like similar to like people that do like, know war reenactments stuff that I'm sure that Affects them too. Yeah, I'm sure it can to a degree Yeah, of course like Spielberg is

pretty well known for being a good actors director. And several of the actors, like David Thulis talked about it, and Niels Airstrup, the French grandfather, talked about it. Hiddleston talked about it. There were several people that, several of the actors just talking about how great it is as an actor to work with Spielberg. yeah, just like how he kind of directs you as you're acting.

Erestrup the the French guy had talked about just like, know, he's older now, so he's done He's had a whole career behind him and he just talked about how Spielberg just like masterfully bound has the balance of like giving you very like specific direction but also allowing you the freedom to Bring yourself and your own ideas into it. It's like a he just like it's a you know, it's a fine line of like balancing those two things because

Eli (01:04:19.177)
actors kind of need a little bit of both. But I'm guessing a lot of directors kind of fall to one side or the other. And he's just such a good balance of that for him. And probably the most interesting thing was Hiddleston talked about how Spielberg gave him one acting direction that's probably the best.

one of the best, if not the best, like, directions he's gotten from a director in his career. And it was when there's this part where the camera is, like, tracking beside Hiddleston as he is in the cavalry charge. And it's tracking beside him, but then it pans in front of him, around in front of him, and you see his face seeing the machine guns. yeah. And Spielberg gave him the directions that as the camera pans,

He said, I want you to slowly de-age your face by 20 years. So you're 29, but by the time the camera stops in front of you, I want you to look like you're nine years old seeing this, what's in front of you, the fear that a child would have. And he was like, that was the best.

Direction note I've ever gotten. That is good. Yeah. And like they showed it in the special features as like he was explaining it and you're like, wow, like he nailed it. You know, you can see like slowly his face just like drain of its like maturity and it's like, and it's confidence and like just drop into like fear and like panic, you know, very, very good.

Yeah, honestly, like not a lot of cinematography talk in the special features. Janusz pops up a few times and is like, oh yes, I knew the lighting. I knew what I wanted to do with the lighting from the script. I mean, basically, like, he's like, yeah, I'm going from bright, vibrant, full of life to like dusty, hazy, dark.

Eli (01:06:48.813)
war. And so, yeah, that's just kind of like, that's, I guess, slowly developed over the moon. It's really like, probably the cavalry charges where that like flips, because you go from like the wheat field into the forest, the shadow. Yeah. Yeah. So there's a lot of ways where that's a transition point in the movie. And a lot of senses.

A lot of different senses, I think. I mean, definitely like...

the way it was shot, mean, it's like that wide lens to be able to pick up this landscape, know? And then I think too, Spielberg denies any overt reference to John Ford, but just that kind John Ford way of allowing the landscape to swallow up.

the people in it. There's definitely like a lot of that. I think whenever he like goes to those like wide shots, you know, and it's like, oh yeah, people are very small. Which is a very like John Ford thing. And also like the the way another like very John Ford thing that probably is an influence here is like

the landscape reflecting the demeanor of the character. He has a lot of stubborn, gritty cowboys in a stubborn, gritty desert environment. And there's some of that here with probably what we were talking about, that British grit and determination is kind of reflected.

Eli (01:08:56.009)
in the landscapes that they're in, in a way. Like, you know, the rockiness of these hills and, you know, the landscape, the, I mean, just think about like the plowing sequence. Like, the land is just as like determined to stay rocky and unfertile as Albert is to plow it. And that's just a very like...

There's like underlying like John Ford-ness to that, you know? Which honestly like I need to like brush up on a lot of John Ford. I do too. But I have seen, the few that I have seen, I definitely like, it's there for sure. Yeah, John Ford has so many movies. It's kind of intimidating. But yeah, I definitely like need to start knocking out some of his like bigger ones here and there.

Yeah costumes you had mentioned loving the costumes. Yeah, they did a great job Any standout like stuff for you as far as that goes or just like I've been to Britain and like there's some of that style I don't know that that style is she talked about like it's kind of like a

There's kind of like a tran- it was like a transition point in style. There's a lot of like, there's really like a lot of like transition point stuff in this of like, you know, obviously like cavalry charges to machine guns, you know? But also like, the way they dressed is moving out of that kind of Victorian, imperialistic kind of like style into a more modern style. Right.

You know a modern style that isn't like what people wear today, but it's like the beginnings of yeah kind of what people wear today But I would imagine a lot of the hats are the same today sure they are But yeah, you know was there any other like standout stuff for costuming for you, I don't know just the

Eli (01:11:16.191)
all the like detailing on the like military uniforms and stuff and like the way that doing a very good job of using like the condition of things to help tell the story and inform the scene. Yeah. You know, the, where things start for, you know, at the beginning of the war with the cavalry versus, you know, once they're like,

in no man's land or when the Germans are marching or anything. But even within that, even being able to tell, these are fresher soldiers. These are officers that have people paying attention to their stuff for them. know, it's cool. Yeah. So, yeah, Joanna Johnson talked about. So she did obviously a lot of research. She was scouring like web websites and museums.

Looking to like recreate these costumes like both like civilian and military She went to the Imperial War Museum and did a lot of research there and like Crazy like even getting like detailed down to like how they were sewn and like They made like 85 % of the costumes Wow from scratch Which is very like a very from

my experience in these few movies I've covered with Joanna Johnston as the costume designer. She's just like, that's what she does. She makes the costumes. Good on her. But yeah, mean, they're, one of the ways that one of the guys was saying that, Johnston I think described at this point, it's a transition point in the way that like,

the British military and probably a lot of other militaries operated too. like they were still like at this point and you can see it like in the early phases of the war in the movie. They're kind of gentlemen first, soldiers second. It's a very like there's like an honor code that you follow and like the cavalry charge is a very like gentlemanly way of war. You know, there's like

Eli (01:13:33.07)
There's kind of like a code to how things are supposed to happen in a set order. And that's kind of like going out the window in the store. It's like, no, we're just going to kill you however we want. We need to kill you sort of thing instead of lining up and respectfully charging each other. And so she really liked it a lot to show the different like.

they transition from like the blue gentlemanly, you know, uniforms to the khakis. And it's going to help you blend in. Yeah. And it's still early or durable. Yeah. It's still, it's still like an early war and it's like kind of like everything's thrown together. So in her research, she found like they're all in khakis, but also like they're not all necessarily the same color khaki. like if you pay attention in the movie,

A lot of the soldiers are like different shades of khakis, which I didn't necessarily notice while watching, but like when they were talking about it in the special features, they were showing scenes and you're like, yeah, like they're all like, not hardly any of them are exactly the same color. Yeah, details. Yeah. The cool details that like you don't necessarily like process while you're watching, but definitely adds to the subconscious like.

you know, enjoyment or like feel of the movie, you know. Yeah. Spielberg did a lot of pre-visualization, you know, 3D animated, very like rudimentary 3D animation pre-visualizations of the scenes that he wanted to do. Largely because, you know, he's he's done that for a long time. But for this one, it was largely because, you know,

He wanted to show it to the stuntmen, the horse trainers, and then the Humane Society people. And they all had to like, okay, we can do these things with the horses and our stuntmen sort of thing. But yeah, they had this lady, Barbara Carr, she was the American Humane Society representative. she was there on set. Anytime there was horses on set, she was there.

Eli (01:15:58.496)
She was even there like two months before shooting started when the horses were being trained. you know, she talked about like, she talked about like, they like were training the horses a lot to build up muscle because they weren't really like having to like actually pull a whole lot in the movie. But they were still doing like a little bit of pulling and they weren't necessarily like horses that were.

that were used to pulling stuff. So they made sure to build their muscles up appropriately to be able to do the little bit of pulling they would have to do. Even carriages, there's not a lot of horses pulling carriages these days. they worked with those horses to do that sort of stuff to build their muscle. And then they weren't trained with any whips or sticks or anything. basically, Spielberg was like,

I don't want any horses to have a scratch at of this movie. That was like his mindset. And so he had Barbara on set and basically gave her, he gave her free rein to cut any scene at any time. And he said she did a few times, like, be like, okay, you know, we've got to cut here and let the horses have a break, sort of thing. And so like,

It was just very like, you could tell they went to all lengths to make sure the horses were safe, which is really cool to hear. And you know, you're kind of at the point in filmmaking history where you kind of have to do that. Sure. But it's nice to hear like... The days of tying down the MGM lion. Right. Or long gone. Yeah. Or even like, I feel like I saw a...

movie recently where a horse fell off of something. Just like in the movie. Like it made sense in the movie, but like it looks to me like the horse is really falling off of this. I was like, I feel like that would hurt the horse. I can't remember what movie it was, but I wish I could remember what that was. Oh, it was, I do remember what it was. It was, oh shoot.

Eli (01:18:21.325)
The director of stalker Tarkovsky it was Andrei Rubilev. Okay, which is you know 50s or 60s movie, but yeah, there's like a horse like falling off of some down some steps or something in that and I was like I was like, yeah, this is definitely a different era a different and a different like place Yeah, cuz he's rushed. This was Soviet Union

Russia that was filmed in. I was like, that poor horse. That would never happen today. No. Not even close. But it's just nice to hear how the links they went to. Having someone like Spielberg who could very easily just do what he wanted. Make sure to have someone that could overrule him.

Because he doesn't know what the horses can or can't handle. He has people that have probably advised him, but he's got too much on his mind to know when to cut for the sake of the horses. They also had to paint the distinctive markings on all the joeys. Makes sense. So they had to match up all the different joey horses.

the right markings for like the socks and the little forehead. Yeah, star thing. Which they said it took about like 45 minutes per horse to get all that done. you know, sounds like a long time but honestly like as far as like people's, you know, extensive makeup goes, that's on the lower end of it. That is. So, you know, the horses got off easy I think on the makeup side.

I mean, and then you have like, obviously have to do a lot of like, they do a lot of training with the horses to get affectations out of them. know, obviously the horses are trained to, you know, do horse things on command. Sure. Like, you know, buck and rear up or, you know, whatever. Winnie and... Yeah. Yeah. Actually, the, so the sounds are not...

Eli (01:20:45.709)
None of the sounds are from on-set sounds. They're all recorded and added in post sounds. That makes sense. That's easy to do. Pro horse. You don't have to match anything up really? No. You can't see that it's like... There's nothing visible that you have to match up. Everything's in the neck. Nothing's lips. And actually, Gary Reidstrom who did the sound...

He did like, so he did a lot of horse recordings, obviously, of a lot of different kinds of horses. And one of the things he found was that miniature horses to him had the most like emotional sounding voices. And so he did a lot of like recordings of miniature horse sounds and slowed them down so that they had a deeper tone. And so a lot of like the more emotional sounds that Joey makes for miniature horses. That's cool.

And then he had some like he did some like you know kind of stuff like his wife has a horse and so he like He said she her horse like will do this like kind of gritting its teeth kind of sound When it sees her it's like it's like excited to see her and it does this like teeth teeth like grinding thing Which makes me I don't like the sound

sound of that it actually doesn't sound as teeth grinding I guess it's a little different than our teeth grinding sure but he added that in at one point as a kind of like he recorded her horse and added that in as like homage to her horse so there's stuff like that in there you know and you know you just kind of have to you just kind of have to like piece together

the horse is supposed to sound and what emotion it's expressing in this moment. It's a... I can't imagine that job. It's a very... seems like a very like rewarding job when it's done, but seems very like tedious when to go through like your library of horse sounds and like work through it, try to match up each one to the scene. Like man, sounds tedious.

Eli (01:23:10.573)
Yeah, the only other like course thing I guess like we should hit on is the I guess like the emotionality of horses Hiddleston talked a lot about it in the special features and some of the other actors did too about how How emotional of creatures horses are

and how they really like, horses almost always like just reflect your emotion back. I don't know, you can speak to that better than I can of what that's like having grown up riding and stuff. Sure, yeah. you, I don't know, yeah, they really pick up your

whatever energy you're taking to them. like if you come up to them and you're nervous, they're gonna be skittish and likely to, you know, start and scare you more and then you're gonna scare them more. If you're, you know, pretty confident with them and especially if you know them and you're, you know, they'll, yeah, they're just...

respond kindly to you and we'll try to be helpful to you even and like whatever you're trying to do with them.

Yeah, they're cool animals. Yeah, yeah Yeah, I've only ridden horses like a couple of times and you know, I think one of them was like You know a friend of a friend and he let me ride on this horse with him sort of thing and then I think I've done like a trail horseback riding kind of as like, you know a pay at some place, you know kind of thing before Be added I don't have a whole lot of experience with

Eli (01:25:17.601)
with the horseback riding. But it feels like a really cool thing to experience. There's actually a lot more than you would think here in South Louisiana horseback riding. There is, yeah. It's a pretty big thing down here. Pretty cool cultural thing. Yeah, mean, one of the things I think Hiddleston

Explained it as like a spiritual bond almost that you like hmm over time working with the same horse that you kind of like and build with it, you know, definitely and You kind of like feed off of each other and whatnot. I'm really cool They also talked about how the cavalry charge scene the horses were really excited to get to like just run And so that was an exciting it wasn't it's funny cuz it

Wasn't necessarily like an exciting thing probably for all the humans to shoot. But was sure horses were like amped up on that day. They're like, yeah, we get to run. I guess like you got the practice cavalry charge too. yeah, you know that one. They get two days. Yeah, two days to just let loose. Yeah, as far as the rest of the design and all that.

Peter Jaxon, so obviously you've got to get a lot of World War I stuff. And World War I stuff is very collectible and it's really hard to get World I stuff. People don't want to just be like, yeah, sure, here's all my memorabilia that probably is worth a lot of money or very dear or whatever. Right. But Peter Jackson is a World War I collector apparently. Oh, cool. And sent them three...

Yeah, three containers of props. Nice. So Peter, old Peter coming through again as he's working on Tintin, I guess. Yeah. So we talked about the Naracot Farm being built from ruins. One cool thing. So there's this place on the Duke of Wellington's property called Stratfield Say Park.

Eli (01:27:42.606)
or SAE, it's S-A-Y-E, I'm not sure how that's pronounced. And that's where they did the cavalry charge out of the wheat field. And all of those are like reeds that they pulled from a swamp area and replanted one by one in this field to film it, like to film in. that is, anytime I hear stuff like that, I'm like,

man, like they went way beyond what I would have went to get that. But it looks great. does. And obviously they have like fans blowing stuff around because there's a lot of like, know, pollen-y, wheat-looking things flying around in the air in that scene to add to like the beauty of it, I think. But man, that's awesome. That's awesome like little shot.

of them popping up out of the reeds and getting on the horses and the cameras going up where you can see all of them. Man, that's a cool shot. It's like, man, Spielberg. Spielberg knows what he's doing. The French farmhouse wasn't really French. Right. And so they had to a lot of Frenchy kind of

stuff to the architecture on the outside to get it to look more French. That did a pretty good job. Yeah, I don't guess I know what to look for, but... Yeah, same. But I mean, when you know that and then you look at it again, you can kind of be like, okay, I can see how like, this is definitely like a British house in the middle of a British countryside that they tried to make like look like a French house in the middle of the French countryside.

Kind of just the feeling of it, you know? Sure. But in the movie you don't really notice that. They did build that windmill. Oh, okay. That they use. And it looks great. It does. It looks well worn, you know? Yeah. Yeah, I would have expected that to have already been around. Yeah. The cannons they had to build. So the original cannons are like eight tons. And the ones they built...

Eli (01:30:06.337)
They got down to like two tons each. And then obviously like the horses can't actually pull two ton cannons up a hill. So they, the horses are like doing enough where they pull the slack out of the ropes, but it's actually like a mechanical winch pulling the cannons up the hill. I figured. Yeah. So, another way to keep the horses safe, but they did have to go.

They did have to do like a lot of takes of that stuff and there was like a few days of like going up and down the hill I think Spielberg talked about that being like the roughest part of the shoot Because I'm sure I'm sure it took a few days probably because they were only allowed to Put the horses up and down the hill so many times per day And so yeah, it makes sense they also built the World War one tank

There's because you can't just like go get a World War one tank. No. They built that. Obviously, like it's not an actual tank, but it's it kind of operates and runs like an actual tank would. And yeah, they said the military advisors were very impressed with its authenticity. So nice. Good. I hope they I hope they kept that in commission and it's.

getting other use. Yeah, I don't know. Who knows? A lot of stuff just gets scrapped or whatever whenever they get done with movies. yeah. But there's also a lot of like storage spaces at these studios with tons of like pieces of old sets. sure. Who knows? Like I think it was, I want to say it was Munich. They like pulled out this old

Or no, it was some movie I covered. No, was Oppenheimer. Because they have the over office scene and they lost their location with five days before they were supposed to shoot and they pulled together this old over office set they found and tried to make it look the best they could. But they had five days to re-

Eli (01:32:31.189)
repurpose all of this old set. So that stuff is still out there, know? Yeah. Some of it. But probably a lot of this stuff isn't because they were shooting like all exterior, so they weren't really in studio for a lot of this. But yeah, No Man's Land. Like I said, on the old airfield, they had around like 750 trenches that were dug and then consolidated and probably re-dug. Like they probably were like doing it.

It was like over six weeks of work that that was so it's not like they dug 750 all at one time sure yeah Yeah, lots of extras lots of rats added to the trenches. Yeah Probably I would guess not as many as are in Last Crusade that was a lot of rats in that movie, but

Yes, so Spielberg has experience adding lots of rats to set already. know, Spielberg. like in something I read, it said Spielberg almost broke his leg on that set. He stepped in like a really deep little like a shell hole that was full of water and like fell in and had to be helped out.

Some accounts I read were like, he almost broke his leg. And I'm like, how do you almost break your leg? Like you either break it or you don't. And so I was already thinking that. And then in the special features, he didn't mention almost breaking a leg. He's just like, yeah, I fell in this hole and I had to get helped out. Like it hurt. And I'm like, okay. So like, I think somewhere along the way this story got exaggerated.

Yeah, but he did fall and get hurt on set Yeah, I mean this and then of course like there's a lot of special effects stuff you have a lot of they have these like They called him flipping plates and they're basically like these little springboards that actors like Can be your like run like stuntmen can be like running

Eli (01:34:53.141)
and then hit for an explosion, so they'll do the little explosive that blows up the dirt, and then they'll flip on this springboard onto a mattress hidden behind a little hill of dirt or whatever. So that's always fun to see them doing that stunt work behind the scenes. And then yeah, you have... So there's obviously the...

the Joey horse running through barbed wire. Which is very hard to watch. yeah. It looks very realistic. It does. I mean it does until you start noticing the lack of blood. Yeah, but there's really not a lot of blood in this movie. No. Because I think he was trying to keep it down for children because it's a children's book. and that makes sense. I, even watching it was like, okay I know that he can't be showing this, but in my head I'm like...

That's a dead horse Yeah Man really really rough to watch really well filmed in the sense that it was hard to watch But yeah, the barbed wire is basically like just foam and like really soft plastic that just breaks apart really easily nice so like you know the horse would like run through it and then they just like kind of just like You know with their bare hands just kind of like pull it off of them

Right. So it wasn't really like damaging to the horse at all. Good. And then there's actually, so there is the scene where like Joey is like writhing around, you know, in the barbed wire and that's not a real horse. it's an animatronic horse. Cool. Yeah. Which I didn't notice in the movie. I didn't either. Yeah. I was like, that's one of the reasons that made it really hard to watch because I was like, this looks like a real horse.

you know, riding around and like, how did they get it to do that? Well, it was an animatronic horse. So another safe option. It was like, they had this like box under it with a couple of people that were able to manipulate like the body and the head and like the head. And then they had like, you know, tubes running to get like the, the nostril breath coming out. And they had like a radio controlled motors in the face that like three puppeteers were operating.

Eli (01:37:20.215)
So was like a pretty extensive like little animatronic thing. But yeah, and then of course like they had like, they did like a clay sculpture mold that they put like, they put fiberglass on either side of it, built fiberglass on either side and then took out the clay and filled it with like a foam latex. That's, know, that could move with the animatronics and added, you know, the skin and the.

and stuff to it sure but yeah very cool very well done like I didn't even notice that it was a animatronic at all it didn't even cross my mind yeah watching it yeah yeah so that speaks to that yeah obviously like obviously like Gary Reichtam had to acquire like a lot of sounds a lot of like

You know, lot of that World War II is kind of like beginning industrial sound. so like he kind of went for that with a lot of like the war machine sounds. And then, you know, you've got to find sounds that sound like a World War II machine gun. Maybe he found like one that he could get fired and record, you who knows? Sure. But yeah, just a lot of that sort of stuff for the sound. And then John Williams, of course, you know,

doing to the John Williams thing with this one. Spielberg even talked about he was like, think these are like two of my best collaborations. I feel like he always says that though, like two of his best collaborations with John Williams between this movie and 1010. And I'm like, you know, but it's not Indiana Jones and it's not Jaws and it's, know, but I will say,

This score is good It's a good score It's not one of those You know, I've talked about through this series like sometimes John Williams scores can all kind of blend together and start to sound the same Yeah, and it's not really that it's like, you know, it's a good John Williams score But the 1010 score actually is probably one of my favorite Yeah, it's one of my favorite like Spielberg John Williams collab scores, I think

Eli (01:39:46.99)
Because it has kind of like the best of both worlds. It has like the some of the jazzy stuff that I love about Catch Me If You Can and then it also has like the on the seas piratey adventure stuff that John Williams does so well. Right. So I love that one. This one's just kind of more like typical emotional. It did. I think I think there's times where like it's.

it's a bit much for my taste in a score. So in the case of like ET, when the score takes over, it just works, but then I think through the rest of his career, sometimes like Spielberg lets John Williams try to do that with a lot of stuff. And it's just rare that that works that well. And sometimes I feel like,

It's just really trying really hard to pull the emotion out with the score. Sure. And I think I think Spielberg just likes that. Yeah, I think I think he just likes John Williams. Yeah. And not to fault him for it. I mean, he's remarkable. Yeah. But I think that he just every time he hears a new piece of music that John Williams has written for him. Yeah. He's like, OK, this is the best thing. Yeah. Yeah. But but I think that was one thing I wrote in my notes was like

There's points where the score is doing too much to try to pull emotions where it needs to be background and not so prominent. that's just kind of how they work together. John Williams is constantly talking about how Spielberg is a very musical director and he always wants the music to be a big part of the movie. I mean, it always...

kind of is with Spielberg, you know. It is. And so it's just kind of one of those things where like when it hits it's great, when it doesn't it's still really good but maybe like they could have toned it down a little bit, you know. It's never really like awful. There's not really any like John Williams Spielberg score collaborations where you're like this is terrible. there's that.

Eli (01:42:12.257)
But yeah, mean, there's some good stuff I love. One of the things that stood out from John Williams was he talked about when you're being introduced to the landscape, he kind of has the music grow with your introduction to it. So it kind of starts with a little flute that's kind of nice and airy and light. And then like...

grows into a full string orchestra and so it blooms at matching the blooming of the landscape into the frame of what you're seeing on screen. And so I was like, that's really cool. It's just cool to hear what a composer was thinking of like, okay, what's my process gonna be for writing a score for this moment? Like this specific moment of...

seeing the landscape come wide into thing. Okay, I'll start, you know, flute to full string orchestra. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, basically like you have post production, start editing. mean, it's kind of like the typical work that Spielberg does with Michael Kahn for editing. They're kind of editing all through production.

So he had started using this Avid software for editing sequences like Michael Kahn had started using it with Spielberg and Tintin and so like as stuff was coming to him he's just like going ahead and editing things down and Spielberg, the way Spielberg describes it is it allows him to like take the pulse of the movie as they go so you can kind of see like

this is their direction things are going. Because you're getting the edit as you go. So you can see, okay, this is kind of where we're going with the movie. So he can kind of make adjustments of like, okay, you know, we're still following the script, but we can make adjustments like to follow this like thread or this emotion in this scene. And then also like before they strike a set, he can go back and get stuff that, we should have gotten this. And they're able to do that.

Eli (01:44:38.209)
because they're editing it as they go. So they can see like, we're missing this. This extra shot that we didn't get, the set's not struck yet. So we can go back tomorrow and get that before we strike the set. So it's just really like, it's how you can shoot a movie in 63 days and turn it over pretty quickly.

But yeah, and Spielberg said editing really makes or breaks a film. It's like, it's the small choices that seem trivial that like really like make or break a film. And I've always, since I've been doing this, I kind of have like learned the importance of editing for movies. But yeah, yeah, they finish up and then like.

as they're like moving into post-production, Spielberg said that he immediately like sends Janusz Kaminski to start scouting in Virginia for Lincoln. So they're already getting going on that. Yeah, we mentioned earlier this released four days after Tintin. Tintin released on the 21st of December and this released on

on Christmas Day on December 25th, 2011. I think I said it in the 1010 episode, but I think that was a bad decision. It seems like it would be. seems like it probably, they kind of like took away from each other's probably, because they're both like, like War Horse, it's not like a typical children's film, but it is based on a children's book.

Right. And it's like, it's kind of, I think it's probably, is it PG-13? I don't remember. think it's... It might be PG. It might be PG. So you know, it's a movie you can take your, I don't know, they kind of, it just seems like the studio kind of... No, it's PG-13. Yeah, okay. But it's still like, it's a PG-13 movie that you would still take your kid to. sure. Because it's based on a children's novel, you know.

Eli (01:47:03.629)
It definitely has a family movie feel to it. so, you know, and 1010 is like the more traditional kids movie. But yeah, I mean, it's like. don't know, they kind of cannibalized each other, you know, as far as like the box office goes, like the success of the movies. And I think Daniel, my guest on the 1010 episode, half blamed

Warhorse for us not ever getting the 1010 sequel. Yeah But yeah, which makes sense it could be who knows it could be but yeah the world the it made 80 million domestic I Don't remember what it made first weekend. It wasn't it wasn't like huge or anything, but

It only made 80 million domestic. It eventually made 177 and a half million worldwide. I did note this, Seabiscuit is the only horse movie to have broken 100 million domestic. wow. So, know, Seabiscuit is still the top, you know, the top dog. Sorry, Joey. You're no Seabiscuit. Which I want to say the...

I want to say the horse that played Seabiscuit might be the same horse. That's Joey? Maybe. let's see. And Seabiscuit. I am googling live on air. In 2003, movie Seabiscuit, Finder's Key, now known as Finder, was one of the ten horses who played the lead role of the famous racehorse. There you go. Finder, man, he's...

He's the horse. is. Apparently. He's the man. If you want to get a horse movie, you got to either get Finder or probably at this point, you know, one of his lineage, you know. Yeah. You know, there's there's speculation about the poor box office performance. You know, I kind of mentioned, you know, just now it's probably partly due to two Spielberg movies being in.

Eli (01:49:24.363)
released within four days of each other. But also, there was questions of the flawed positioning of the film, kind of along the same lines that we were just talking. It's a PG-13 movie based on a children's novel. So it's like, is it for children? Is it for adults? It's kind of hard to categorize. I wrote this quote down from Justin Wang in Variety at the time.

He said quote the film was too long and intermittently too intense for small fry but also too repetitive and simplistic to engage adults on more than an earnestly prosaic level so just kind of hitting on that kind of like Hard to categorize like who is this movie for it's like it's too it's in in some ways it's like emotionally and narratively like really simplistic and

less engaging for adults but also like too like intense in some sections and too long. is too long. is yeah. Two hours and 20 minutes. It did not need to be two hours and minutes. Not at all. Too long for kids. So it's like that's probably like one of the biggest things working against it is just like who is this movie for? You know it's probably something they probably should have like went one way or the other more on.

Like make it bloodier and you know, you know, we're devastating or like make it a bit more like like shorter and like for one thing shorter and you know Really like there's not a whole lot they would have had to change to really like market it more for as like a kids and family movie They could have made it. I don't know like there's

It's probably the No Man's Land sequence that makes it PG-13, I would imagine. I would think so. Because there's really not... I don't know if some of the other like, kind of like, quote unquote, like, hidden killings would... don't know if those would still be allowed for PG or not. I think they probably would be. Yeah.

Eli (01:51:44.032)
I'm not sure. It's like they don't show them being killed, but you know what's happening sort of thing. Yeah, I don't I'm not sure. I'm not sure how that works. yeah, Spielberg along those lines said, quote, saving Private Ryan was carnage and warhorse. had to find the right balance between my desire to reach a young audience, the one in the book and my responsibility not to betray the facts. And so like he was he was kind of feeling that.

that tug kind of both ways of like, okay, it's war, like I have to show war, but also like the original audience was children, so I have to cater to that too. And so I get that tension, it's definitely there, but it probably hurt the movie's success for general audience. Probably. For sure. But I think it...

I mean it works and then yeah, yeah. I like so in my opinion like I and I thought it was good. I enjoyed it for the most part and like thought it works for what it is and like I was even thinking like I could probably show this you know to my son when he's probably like nine or ten years old. Yeah, you know it's it's not so you know.

It's not like some PG-13 where it's like, no, you definitely need to be around 13, 14 before you watch this. It's kind of one of those, it's kind of one of those, it's like a, this is not the best thing, like analogy, but it's kind of like a Marvel PG-13 where like, maybe it's PG-13 because there is some violence and stuff and maybe like,

you know, lower grade cuss words or something. It's kind of PG-13 in that sense of like, okay, yeah, like, yeah, it's PG-13, but like, you can show this to a 10 year old and they're, they're fine. can handle it. yeah. So I feel like this is kind of like in that area. And yeah, I think it would be a good movie to like explore. I don't know. To me, it's like for kids for like,

Eli (01:54:10.155)
you know, a 10 year old kid, it would be a pretty decent movie to show to start like exploring like what war is and the effects it had because it is like for all intents and purposes, like from the POV of the horse, even in the movie, like it kind of allows for like exploring with a child those hard questions about the realities like of, of history and of war today, you know, that sort of thing. So

I know. I think it could work in that way. think so too. just commercially, it's just hard to categorize, hard to market. Yeah. And yeah, I definitely see where the criticism came from that angle. But I guess there's a difference of like...

commercially it not working but in reality it kind of like making sense for what it is. But it was praised by a large proportion of American critics. Like they really appreciated the kind pacifist Spielberg message. You know, like we were talking about that kind of like old fashioned Hollywood classic feel to the movie, you know. Definitely has that.

I forgot in my notes to write down the awards. So I'm gonna pull up the IMDB page as we speak. Man, we're doing a great job like Googling and looking up stuff live on air. I didn't know it get, I do know it had nominations, so I wanted to look it up. Six, it had six Oscar nominations. It was nominated for achievement in art direction.

for sound editing, sound mixing, when those were two separate things. They're the same now, sound editing and mixing now. Music, so for the score, for cinematography, and for best picture. It was a best picture nominee. Really? It was. And this would have been the 2012 Academy Awards, because this released in 2011. But yeah, it was nominated for best picture.

Eli (01:56:31.595)
I don't know who the other nominees that year were, but I can imagine this was probably one of those that's like not getting a ton of votes for Best Picture. It's just like, it's a solid Spielberg movie kind of thing, so it gets a Best Picture nomination. Maybe not. the ballot. Yeah, fill out the ballot.

I don't know, this would have been after Dark Knight, which is when they moved to 10. The Dark Knight is the reason they moved it to 10. Best Picture nominees. Yeah, Best Picture, oh, The Artist.

That was the year the artist won. So the other nominees were, for best picture, were the Descendants, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Moneyball, Midnight in Paris, The Tree of Life, Hugo, and The Help. And Warhorse. And then the artist won. So I still have not seen the artist. Have you ever seen that? I have not, no. Yeah. I don't feel a strong like...

cool to see it honestly. I want to watch a black and white silent film I'll watch one from the era where they were from. No, sure. I don't know that's probably unfair. don't it's probably a pretty good movie but yeah. That might be something I get to one day but yeah it's not just been high up on the list. Kind of filling out the best picture sure stuff but yeah.

but yeah, mean that's that's all on production and release and all. let's, let's, let's hit some like key things about the movie. Sure. I like to start with the quibbles and get those out of the way. Did you have any like quibbles with the movie or like major, even like a major quibble? Like, my small quibble to just get things rolling is what's up with the goose?

Eli (01:58:56.983)
We talked about, I think its name was Harold. The Goose, it just like, they set up this goose like it's gonna be a big part of the story and then it just like, it chases David Thulis off the property and that's like the last time you see the goose. I was thinking like, while I was watching it, I was like, this goose, they keep showing this goose at the beginning and then like.

At the end I was like, wait a second, what happened to that goose? That was like my minor quibble. Did you have any minor ones or major ones?

Eli (01:59:41.134)
Not really. It was a bit long for what it was. That's probably one of the major ones. Yeah, that's a major one. And some of that is just like, they're really trying to stick to the book and they're really trying to do all the parts of the book. So I get it. But then like, I don't know, like some some sequences just drag on probably too long. Like the plowing sequence is is pretty

good in parts, but it's really long. It lasts a long time and it just feels like there was a lot of sequences like that that could have been more efficiently shown and told. all those added up make for a two hour and 20 minute movie. Yeah, they could have tightened up a lot of that there at the beginning. And probably the bit at the end

Not going towards the end with the the lone German soldier with the two horses. Yeah, some of that could have gotten tightened up a good bit. Yeah, I agree. That's a very like that felt pretty quick in the book from what I remember that sequence. But yeah, there it's basically like a lot of this, the sequences could have just been tightened up a little bit and more like

kind of efficiently like told. And I think that would have helped it a lot. Cause I found myself like, you know, I'm watching at home, but I'm just like finding myself like a little bit distracted of like, okay, we've been plowing for a while now. Like, are we going to get this? I know this field is going to get plowed because like it's a Spielberg movie. It's a horse movie. Like I know the horse is going to plow the field. Can we get there? You know?

There's a lot of that, like, I know the horse is gonna get the cannon up the hill. The movie's called War Horse. I know the war horse isn't gonna die. It's the hero. So yeah, that is a lot. It's weird because it's a very emotionally like...

Eli (02:02:06.763)
baked movie, you know, there's like a lot of sentimentality and a lot of like emotion baked into the movie. partly because of the source material, partly because like it's a Spielberg movie. and like all that added up. It's like, it's this weird thing for me of like, some of it is like, my gosh, this is like way emotionally overdone. And then sometimes it's like,

man, I'm on the verge of tears. This is totally working. And so it's all through the movie. I guess maybe because it's so episodic, you get some episodes in the movie that just feel way overbaked emotionally. And then other sequences that really just hit. I don't know, did you find that? Yeah. Let's see. The bit with the German soldier at the end felt a little overbaked.

Sure.

There were moments with Tom Hiddleston that were starting to feel a little over baked to me. Sure. Yeah. Like drawing horses. like, come on, man. yeah. That definitely felt... Which is in the book. Okay. He is drawing like pictures of a horse, but it's like it's not so prominent as it is in the movie. Like you don't... It's like we talked about, it's the horse POV. So you don't get like...

Albert receiving the letter. Yeah, I found that like in my head. was like, I don't believe for a second this officer is writing letters to the kid that sold him his horse. Yeah. Yeah. Like I did and I didn't, you know, it's like, it's not very realistic, but like for like a fably kind of feeling story, it should make sense. So it's kind of like, you know, it's like yes and no.

Eli (02:04:06.689)
What about things that worked emotionally? There's two major ones for me.

Eli (02:04:15.329)
Another, while you're thinking, another over baked thing is like, it's one of those things that like, I don't know, it's probably just like cynicism or, you know, my like, calloused heart, but like, solemnly swearing to your horse, like as it's going away, it's kind of like, I get it, but it's like, I don't know, it just doesn't work emotionally for me necessarily.

That's a bit over baked a little bit to me is like though that whole like kind of trope of like Saying goodbye to your animal best friend It's just like okay, yeah, I've I've seen this way too many times for it to like really affected me very well, yeah But it's it's an animal movie it's gotta be in there it's

Yeah, that's probably true. What about like, emotional parts that worked for you? Certainly the scene in No Man's Land where the British guy and the German guy both go out to rescue Joey while he's in distress, tangled up in the barbed wire. I'm sure that's one of the ones you were going to mention. Yep, that was one of mine.

best scene of the movie to me. yeah. Spielberg said it was like his proudest scene of the movie, which I think it should be. Like it looks great. Kominsky is like so good at that kind of like blue dark, like lighting and color, like coloring like looks so good. just like the way that, that like blue haze over everything and you know, you have the puddles like reflecting and

Yeah, just I mean it's it's the war of barbed wire. So you've got barbed wire everywhere Yeah, World War one the great war of barbed wire, I think Probably the most brutal war that will ever happen. Yeah, and yeah, I think like Yeah, obviously I'm saying this jokingly about something that is devastating but like

Eli (02:06:37.035)
You know, the barbed wire per capita is probably reflective of that. As Joey, you know, experienced firsthand, it's like, come on guys, like I'm trying to run out here. What's up with all the barbed wire? Frederick told me to run. You know, yeah, that scene is just so good. Cause like I'm watching it and my mind is just like,

thinking about all the devastation from war that's happened since then and all the devastation of war that's happening now and how you can just get two normal guys out there that are like, let's save this horse together. It's like, hey man, I'm gonna be shooting at you again soon. I wish they would just let us sit down over beers at the pub and figure this thing out.

and we could probably figure it out, you know? It's just like, man, there's just, I don't know, it's like touching and disheartening all at the same time. I don't know, there's just a lot of, that scene is so like emotionally charged and like, just everything about it is very well done to me. Like top notch Spielberg work, you know?

Yeah, the other one for me is when the grandfather gives Albert back to, I mean Joey back to Albert. I don't know why, but when starts, when he's like, you know, he like kind of calls back to like, you know, this is what Emily would have wanted and she was the boss. You know, I was like, gosh. It got like a little bit of a little wet eyes for me.

But yeah, it's just so funny how like in a Spielberg movie like this, you can just have scenes where you're rolling your eyes at the overcharged emotions and then other scenes where like you're like wiping your eyes. I don't know. It's just, guess what you get when you watch a Spielberg movie. Yeah. In that scene, you're almost like, man, I don't...

Eli (02:09:01.963)
I don't actually know who I want the horse to go to. It's like this poor grandpa, you know, and then Albert who misses him. man. It's yeah. Yeah. That's like, and that's probably the scene. The, the no man's land sequence, like really doesn't have anything to do with Joey. It's, it's about the interaction of the two men. And that's probably like the main scene where like Joey and like his journey, like

the emotions of that play for me is like, cause you're like, don't know, like you said, I don't know who I want Joey to go with. But that's, that's is centered around like Joey and his like connection to both people, you know.

Yeah. Yes, I'll spout off a few Spielberg distinctives. There's low angle close ups galore. Oh, yes. I mean, you even end on one of Joey. But then, know, those low angles with the sky as the background close ups that push in and, you know, show Enly Watson's like sad face or, you know, Joey.

Yeah, the like kind of and then along with that juxtaposing like close-ups to like wide shots that kind of like it it shows like the motion of the face and then like pulls out or like cuts to a wide shot that like match the motion of the close-up so sometimes it's like

Devastation like we talked about what like the Hittest Hittleston thing because like shortly after that you get like the wide shot of like all the horses and men in the field Yeah Or like sometimes it's like wonder like we talked about with Albert, you know him seeing the horse and then you get a wide shot of like the horse in the moors like the beautiful Landscape so like there's that it Spielberg does that like throughout his career

Eli (02:11:15.391)
showing you those that juxtaposition foreshadowing images i think the main one that stood out to me was like the furrows digging the plows and then the trenches in the som later in the movie that's definitely like a kind of a foreshadowing image that's very like for sure deliberate sure

Yeah, and then like Comedy worked into kind of the action and adventure of it all like it's like when Spielberg tries to lean too much on comedy Prime examples to me or 1941 in the terminal It just doesn't work But when he kind of just like throws in some comic stuff in the middle of like action and adventure like indie movies or like in here It generally like pretty work

works pretty well like yeah it does yeah like it's not the main focus but it's just like a quick joke here or like a slapsticky thing like like here or sometimes it's accidental like they talked about Joey when when Ted first brings him onto the farm and he's like holding them and like talking in slurs to Rose you know and Joey goes and like tips his hat

That wasn't like plans Joey just kind of like was or I guess it was probably finder The the horse was probably like just like doing his horse thing and like tipped his hat and like They were trying to hold it together in the scene But like, know, probably some of the crew was probably laughing at you know him tipping the hat, but it looked it works really well in the movie Because you're like that horse

But yeah, mean, there's a ton of good stuff here.

Eli (02:13:20.489)
What do you, I know we've talked about like the emotional scenes that work for us. What about like images or just like shots that we've talked about some of those too. We have. Like the wheat field was a big one for me. We've talked about the horses like running into the woods in that same sequence. Yeah.

I think I wrote it down as like hidden kills that are beautifully and heart-wrenchingly rendered at the same time Yeah, like that's one of them when you know you get the images of like the horses empty horses jumping over the machine gun right and you're just cutting back and forth between the cavalry still on the horses in the field and Then immediately no more calvary on the horses. Yeah, and then you know leaping over the man. That's a that's a crazy Yeah

Yeah. Yeah. Crazy, crazy.

just, yeah, it's beautiful to see, but knowing what it's representing is just heart-wrenching. And such an efficient and like, it's just a prime example of.

you know, showing by not showing. Like, if you're showing, it's almost like works better emotionally for you to put the pieces together in your mind as you're seeing these empty horses jumping over the machine guns and for it to like land that way than for you to just see like a bunch of like dudes getting shot and blood splattering everywhere. Yeah, just very like...

Eli (02:15:14.221)
I don't know what word to use for it, but I guess wise and emotionally intelligent kind of. Like I said, it's just another example of Spielberg. Sometimes he has that and then sometimes it goes the opposite direction and it's too overbaked emotionally. But yeah, it's just another example of like,

how when it works it really works. The other example of that that's like that beautiful yet heart-wrenching rendering is when the German deserters are killed with the windmill. The windmill comes down and they're shot when it's covering them up and then when it goes down they're laying on the ground dead. Yeah just like beautifully rendered but like devastating and like

You don't have to show them, you have to show any blood. It stays in that wide shot. You don't have to show them falling to the ground. It's just, you hear the shots and then you see them on the ground and that's all you need for it to work. Yeah, very good. Going back to the comical thing, it's probably one of those, it's probably an example of something that,

probably could have gotten cut from the movie and it wouldn't have changed anything. But kind of works as just a fun scene comically too, is when he's racing the car. is the first time you see him riding Joey in the movie. I think I noted that it's 38 minutes in is the first time he's riding Joey. And yeah, he's racing the car with

the David Lyons character with the girl in the car and then Joey won't jump over the little wall and he flies over. It's funny, it got a chuckle out of me. But it's also like, he probably could have cut that from the movie. But also it was a fun scene, so I don't know, guess I'm glad he didn't. And it sets up the little French girl being able to teach him to jump later in the movie.

Eli (02:17:40.821)
Yeah, that is true. You kind of see like, Joey doesn't like to jump. Which that is a thing, I think, in the book too, of him not really liking to leap over things. And then he does. The first time he does in the book is jumping over the machine guns. yeah. Yeah.

I guess I was thinking what you were going to say was it kind of sets up like the rivalry with him and the other kid which kind of like plays later when he like saves him even though they're you know rivals that you know that I guess it kind of plays into that too. It does. There's the shot of there it's one of those that's like Spielberg just having fun is like the reflection of Emily.

in Joey's eye when she first finds him, you know? My favorite quote from the movie was from the little like grandfather monologue where they're talking about like she asks him like why he didn't like fight back or anything and he tells this like anecdote and stuff but the quote that I wrote down was

Maybe there are different ways to be brave. I was like, that's a good like You know kind of like cliche ish but like well well like Timed in the movie kind of quote, you know, It feels like very like children's novel quote that like works well for for children, you know, yeah

You saying that now, I hadn't thought of like a favorite quote, but along those same lines early in the movie, when Emily Watson's character is talking to him, to Albert about his dad's military service, and kind of his PTSD and how he's ended up the man that he is now, she, you know, kind of

Eli (02:20:01.56)
tells a story about him being heroic and the Albert says something about he never talks about it and he doesn't seem like anything that he cares about and she's like, we'll think about how brave he is not to be proud of it. Yeah, that was good. I do remember that. that seemed to kind of sets up the...

I guess like that relationship well too between father and son and kind of like the non-dialogue reconciliation you kind of get at the end when the son has come, when Albert's come back and he's kind of like experienced and kind of like probably better understands his father now. yeah, just like you get

you get them kind of reconciling, no dialogue, just kind of like a slow approach and embrace, which that image can be very powerful. yeah, I think that image in the movie worked pretty well for me. I didn't need some exchange between the two and dialogue. That was enough. But yeah, that whole speech that the mom gives definitely like...

It sets that up well. I kind of like, the whole pennant thing is like kind of a bit much. I agree. It's like, I don't know, they talked a little bit about it in the special features, but I still had a hard time like grasping why they felt that was necessary to like follow through the movie. I don't know. I agree.

Yeah, the only other image that I thought was incredible was before Joey ends up in No Man's Land. He's running through the trenches and the horse was really running through the trenches, you know? And it looks so good. It looks incredible. Yeah, that's...

Eli (02:22:27.937)
That's the only thing I had as far as that goes.

But going back to the father-son, thought one thing I thought was interesting was like there's like kind of a juxtaposition, especially in that first part of the movie of like the foolishness of the father juxtaposed with the foolishness of the son, but it's like a different, it's like a different type of foolishness. It's like, it's

It just kind of makes me think of like, you know, how I'm like my dad, but like it plays out in a different way than like, than that quality of my dad. And I'm sure like, like Ezekiel, my son will like be like me in a way, but it'll play out for him that quality in a different way than me. And so like the, there's like this kind of

foolish stubbornness kind of to both the father and the son. But the father, like, it feels more like of a, this kind of like mix of like pride, but also like defeatedness. It's like this weird like mix of, they sound like opposites in a way, but I don't know. He kind of has both, like he kind of has this stubborn pride that's also like this defeatedness.

Stubborn defeat and this I don't know. It's weird and that quality is in the Sun too, but the way it plays out in him and maybe it's just Of him being young but it's like this naive It's it's more of like this naive foolishness. That's full of like hope and Determinant like determinism and so it's like it's like the same quality but like with a different perspective on life in a different like way it plays out in

Eli (02:24:26.253)
and how he goes about things. And I just thought that was interesting. I was thinking about that as I was watching the movie. And the plow sequence is probably the prime example of how it looks for the father, that quality, versus how it looks for him trying to plow the field. But yeah, I just thought that was an interesting little character thing for the father-son.

Eli (02:24:55.669)
Do you... So, you know, obviously the movie is kind of told alongside Joey. It's not quite like the book where it's like Joey POV, but it's still told through Joey, in a sense, the movie. Do you feel like that was an effective way to tell the story or...? I think so. Yeah. Like, so...

I kind of was thinking about and wrote in my notes how the way it's told through Joey allows you to explore... it follows the animal, but it allows you in a way to explore the humanity or lack thereof in what you're experiencing because you're not following a human.

Did you see that? I do. Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting because like it almost like it almost like takes the horse POV kind of like stick to be able to like kind of it's almost like you're you're kind of pulling it out away from yourself and holding it out here so that you can like turn it or turn the object around and like see it or whatever in a more full view and like you you take something

like a horse that's like completely innocent, right? And so then you put him in that environment and like kind of follow him and see how he interacts with people. And it's like that allows you to like really see the like futility of everything that is going on and like the inhumanity and like because you're taking something innocent and beautiful and putting it

and something that's like unexplainably harsh and ugly. And yeah, that juxtaposition, I think there's a better movie to be had out of this with that idea. But for what it is, I think it's really good and works, kind of like what we were talking earlier. But yeah.

Eli (02:27:22.689)
I know, I just think it's a very interesting concept and way to make... no, Spielberg kind of talked about he doesn't see it as a war movie. Okay. He kind of sees it more... I don't know, it was hard to like get exactly what he meant by that, but I kind of understand what he means. It's not really like about the war per se. no. It's about like...

the people that are experiencing the war, I guess, and the effects it has on them.

I mean, it is called War Horse. True. And yeah, and the British soldier just says, ah, War Horse. one point I'm like, oh, that's the name of the movie. I think in a lot of ways that almost makes it more about, about war in a way. Cause I mean, war, World War I wasn't about France for getting shot. It was about all the guys and the, you know, that was the actual war. It was, you know, it's, it's not the

the stupid stuff all the way at the top level. It's the actual war is the reality of the people that are getting forced to do the labor of resolving the issues in the most inefficient way possible and most devastating way possible. Yeah. And yeah, it's I think Joey too, the horse like also like kind of like

provides the thread of hope through the story too, because he doesn't, the horse doesn't know any other way to live but to press forward and try to befriend, find people that show him love and stay close to those people and find hope in that way. So there's that aspect too of all the horse knows is this

Eli (02:29:29.581)
this is another creature that treats me well. as long as I stay close to this person, then I'm gonna be okay.

Eli (02:29:45.109)
And then that plays out in the no man's land when the British and German guy come together and they have a discussion along those lines. If only we could just grab some tea and talk about things. But Joey carries that idea through the movie as a whole, I guess.

And this is the quote that Spielberg has about not seeing it as a war film. He said, quote, this is much more of a real story between the connections that sometimes animals achieve, the way animals can actually connect people together, unquote. And so, yeah, I get where he's coming from, but also, like, your point still stands that, like, in a sense, like, that is still, like, what this war, like,

the problem with what is showing like the problem of this war just from just in a different way than something like Sabin Private Ryan does. It's still like it feels in a lot of ways like as much as you can make an anti-war film it feels like an anti-war film. You're in a very different way showing like the futility of it. Yeah.

The only other the other the other thing Spielberg says is like courage is the theme that informs every frame I'm like, I mean, okay I can see that's very broad. But yeah, I mean sure. Yeah. Yeah. They all have to be courageous. It's a war you know and I feel like all all like war films have like

courageous and uncourageous characters and those are ducks to pose against each other. This one doesn't have a whole lot of uncourageous characters. No. And even outside of the war, the plowing the field, even the dad buying the horse at the beginning, even in a way the dad like going against the family to sell the horse to help them make it. Yeah. Like all of that is courage.

Eli (02:32:11.937)
Yeah, it is. And yeah, I definitely see that. I guess like, I'm kind of like, it's very broad and it's not really like what I took away from the movie. It's like, I need to be courageous. You know? So I was like, yeah, I get that. But also like, I feel like that's not like the, I feel like that's even though Spielberg saw it as like the theme that carries it all. Like that's not how it felt to me.

just personally the way I experienced the movie. It's all the other stuff we've been talking about that felt more like what the movie was about than just like the broad theme of courage. I agree. you know, yeah, he might have said more, but that's just what they put. That's what they pulled out and edited into the making of, you know, behind the scenes stuff. The other...

The other thing that I just thought was cool about the movie is something we kind of touched on earlier, but it's just like, it really like displays like the changing world. So you have wrote down some juxtapositions. You have horses versus cars. there's the introduction of cars starting to come about, you You have the cavalry charge and the machine guns.

And then tanks, have like the Joey versus Tank kind of little sequence. There's that kind of changing of how war happens that we've kind of talked about. We talked about the regal uniforms into the khakis. yeah, the kind of heroism that reigned in the old way of like

resolving these conflicts into just like everyone is a is it You know Moving into like World War two where they're just all Tommy's. Yeah, know, they're just all someone with a with khakis and a helmet on and Don't you know? There's something to aim at right? Yeah, and so there's just like There's just a lot of like transition That's like shown in the movie. I just think it's interesting. It's like

Eli (02:34:35.725)
And you are like it's it is like I guess the other thing would be like the cavalry charge that transition from like light into darkness that we talked about and it really is like if you think about it this war is The transition into the bloodiest century in human history. Yeah and there is a sense where like humanity has always had like

terrible ways of dealing with conflict. But man, that... We've come up with some horrible ones in last hundred years. That 20th century was rough. And I think this movie kind of like, in a sense it just has that feel of that transition into like, we're advancing in a lot of ways, but we're also regressing in lot of ways as well. And so...

I just thought that was pretty well portrayed in the movie overall I Yeah, I agree. Did you have any final thoughts on the movie or feel like we've probably hit everything?

Yeah, I feel like we've covered things pretty well. What about you? Any final thoughts? I don't really have anything else. I don't have any, like... I feel like we've kind of hit on all the stuff that I... that really stood out to me. Yeah, I don't know. I feel like... There's, I mean, there's some stuff that like... I guess just as a... just to put a bow on it. There's some stuff in this movie that feels like, you know...

Spielberg just doing kind of his middle of the road good good stuff and then but there's then there's just moments that are like You know feel like he's at it like at the top of his game kind of you know the no-man's-land sequence like some of the some of like the tracking shots of like The cavalry charge or Joey running through the trenches and like all that stuff is just like wow. This is like so

Eli (02:36:57.185)
Like these are like shots that like you expect from Spielberg and like kind of like the reason I go to the movies kind of like shots like. So yeah, I guess just to put a bow on it, overall I really liked this movie and I think those kind of like standout moments along with like the, just the way it's shot and everything.

kind of elevate this above like above almost any other director that might have directed it. sure. Spielberg made it into a movie where I can say yeah like yeah I really liked that movie whereas I probably would have been way more like mixed to like down on it probably with any other director you know. Yeah I can see that. So it really does feel like a quintessential like Spielberg

should have direct i'm glad still there directed this movie because he's the only one that could have pulled sort of thing you know the right kind of magic yeah yeah know what i guess what's your arbitrary meaningless rating and slash ranking for this one where where would it fall for you for spillberg movies

I have the handy dandy letterbox to list. I haven't put it in my Spielberg list yet. Well, while you pull it up, I'll go ahead and say I have it like, it kind of lands in. So I have 40 Spielberg projects ranked and that includes a few like TV things that they have on like Night Gallery and

The Savage pilot episode. Amblin, his short. So I have like some of his like other stuff ranked in here too that they have available on Letterboxd. yeah, I have it kind of like right in the middle. It's right at 19 for me. There's a couple of movies that I need to revisit that it's ahead of that might jump back over it whenever I get to them.

Eli (02:39:22.325)
as I go through the series, yeah, I have it ranked like a three and a half star, seven out of 10 for me. I enjoyed it enough to bump it up to the seven out of 10. At a lot of moments it felt like a three star movie to me, but there were enough really great moments where I was like, no, it has to be at least for me a seven out of 10.

I think I agree I would probably put it at about a 7 out of 10 and I just put it in Actually right between 1010 and the post. Okay. Yeah. Yeah for me on my Spielberg list Yeah, I have it. I actually liked it more than 1010 So I have it a few spots above that but it's I need to revisit 1010, but I remember liking 1010 a lot myself Yeah, I have it right right below dual

And right above Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but I also like Kingdom of the Crystal Skull a lot more than Consensus. That's true So and the post is right there too. The post is one that I don't know I might like the post more on revisit and move it up, but so you know It could it could It's in a solid spot. I mean like it's right there at the top of my like seven out of ten Spielberg movies. So everything almost everything above it is

I have like a 8 out of 10 4 star kind of, I think I have 16 of his movies 4 stars and above. you know, yeah, mean just a really solid like, that's the thing like the middle tier of Spielberg movies are like really good movies. good to great movies, know? So it's like a middle to Spielberg movie, that's

pretty high praise you know that is other that's where i have it don't really have anything else for this week we're gonna be mean taste or can be doing a draft movie draft next week it i was trying to think how first i was like thinking how we can do like movie animals draft but that was maybe to grow too broad

Eli (02:41:44.117)
And so was like, let me find something a little bit more specific of a category. So we're going to do, I don't know what to call it, ridden animals or mounted animals or... Sure. ...however you want to phrase it. you know, this was a horse movie about a horse that got ridden. And so we're going to do a draft of animals in movies that have people ride or maybe not even people, but sometimes other animals maybe ride on them. knows? We'll see.

But that's gonna be next week. The Ridden Animals in Movies draft. It's gonna be a fun one. Yeah, it'll be fun. It's like oddly specific enough to be interesting. Yeah. And then of course we'll be picking up the week after that with Lincoln. And so that should be a fun episode too. I'm excited to revisit that one. I've been listening to the audiobook of the book that it is sort of like...

was the source material for it. So that's what's coming up. Ridden animals in movies. Movie draft and Lincoln. yeah. Yeah, Chase is really like, usually you just say to follow you on Letterboxd. So I'll make sure to link Chase's Letterboxd in the episode description and yeah, go follow him there. He logs movies. I I log movies. It's fun.

Letterbox is nice. No drama zone. No. Yeah, so I Stay away from most social media to stay out of the drama zone. Yeah Yeah, it's for the best Yeah, that's that's really all we have for this week I've been Eli price for chase Abels. You've been listening to the establishing shot. We will see you next time