Oscar Winning director, Steven
Spielberg is back again with an emotional epic on a classic scale in DreamWorks
& Reliance Entertainment’s War Horse which
will release in India on 10th February.
When the
nominations for the 84th
Annual Academy Awards were
announced on Tuesday, War Horse
bagged six nominations. Oscar Nomination
for the Best
Picture - Steven Spielberg & Kathleen Kennedy,
Cinematography- Janusz Kaminski, Art
Direction- Rick Carter (Production design) and Lee Sandales (Set
Decoration), Music - Original Score - John Williams, Sound
Editing- Richard Hymns and Gary Rydstrom, Sound Mixing- Gary Rydstrom, Andy Nelson, Tom Johnson and
Stuart Wilson.
After releasing in the US on 25th December to
extremely good reviews from critics and audience alike, the film opened in the
UK on 13th January. The film even won the Best Cinematography Award at the
recently concluded 17th Critics Choice Awards.
War Horse, a story of friendship and war,
first became a well-loved family book, then an innovative stage play that took
audiences by storm and now it sees another incarnation in its most visceral
medium yet. War Horse is set against a sweeping
canvas of rural England and Europe during the First World War. It begins with
the remarkable friendship between a horse named Joey and a young
man called Albert played by Jeremy Irvine as he tames and trains
Joey. When they are forcefully parted, the film follows the extraordinary
journey of the horse as he moves through the war, changing and
inspiring the lives of all those he meets — British cavalry, German
soldiers, and a French farmer and his granddaughter — before the story reaches
its emotional climax in the heart of No Man’s Land.
“ War Horse says a lot about courage; the courage of this boy and
what he endures and what he overcomes to achieve what he needs and not just for
himself but also for his best friend, his horse Joey. It’s also about the
courage and the tenacity of this extraordinary animal. The theme of courage
kept coming back and back from the play, from Michael Morpurgo’s book and from
Lee Hall and Richard Curtis’ screenplay. That was the underlying subliminal
theme that I think informs every frame of War
Horse”, says the director.
Steven Spielberg did not want to
sign a known face for the role of Albert, “I auditioned hundreds boys for the
role of Albert and right in the middle of the search process, we found Jeremy.
And then we moved on to see if anybody else could match him. And several months
later, we came back to Jeremy, realizing that he was the best person for the
part.”
“What’s fantastic about Steven
is that he gives you enough space to work and have your own margins of
experimentation on things. Everything that Steven Spielberg does has a
realism to it. The most incredible thing about working with Steven Spielberg is
that you get the best people in the world working with you. There’s no doing
things by halves. Everything is done the best way it can possibly be done,”
says Jeremy Irvine who sure was elated to have landed the role of Albert in
the film.
The First World War is
experienced through the journey of this horse—an odyssey of joy and
sorrow, passionate friendship and high adventure. War Horse an epic adventure for audiences of all ages releases
in India on February 10th 2012.
