-
Sentimentality: Cinema’s Last Taboo
15 Jan 2012 by Paul Bullock in Editorial, Film / 4 Comments
This article contains spoilers for War Horse. Do not read on if you haven’t seen the film…
Ssssss. It’s cinema’s insidious syllable, the sizzling sound of all things salacious and scuzzy. Even the noise itself has something seedy and scornful about it. Sex. Sin. Scandal. You can’t say those words without spitting that ‘s’ syllable out with delicious spite. There is, however, no word as scalding as the worst ‘S’ word of all – a word so simply sinful it’s one of the most searing tools in a film critic’s toolbox. The word is ‘sentimentality’ and the worst offender of this most sickening of sins is another significant ‘s’: Steven Spielberg.
The director is back on cinema screens this week with his latest release, War Horse, an adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s World War I childrens’ book and the stage play that came from it. It tells the story of a young man called Albert, who raises a farmhorse named Joey in the years running up to the outbreak of war. When fighting commences, Joey is taken by the British military to pull heavy artillery, and the story focuses on his struggles through the war and Albert’s attempts to be reunited with him. Hope and courage – it’s typical Spielberg stuff and I think it’s his most crowdpleasing drama since 2003′s Catch Me If You Can.
Not all critics agree though, and it’s no surprise that the ‘S’ word has been out in force. Run a search for the term ‘War Horse sentimental’ and you’ll get 2,500,000 results. Of course, not all those results are using the term ‘sentimental’ negatively, but many are. The Metro praises the film as “sweeping” before adding pointedly “but sentimental”, Andrew Pulver of The Guardian says it displays “toxic levels of sentimentality” and Nigel Andrews of The Financial Times dismisses it as a “sentimental, fulsome, platitudinous yahooing of Michael Morpurgo’s equine odyssey”.
The film is undoubtedly sentimental, but that should be expected. Despite what Andrews’ review would have you believe, Morpurgo’s story is inherently sentimental, softening some of the grimmer realities of war to use the fighting as a metaphor for life’s struggles and trials. Joey, and Albert’s relationship with him, is also representative, the horse symbolising home, hope and peace, and the need to hold on to those things even in the darkest of hours. War Horse is a childrens’ story – a brilliant and vital one – and sentiment is used smartly by Morpurgo to deliver a message about the futility of war.
In one of his most dramatic divergences from the book, Spielberg presents this point visually by having Albert attach his father’s war pennant to Joey. This slice of home, which we’re told at the film’s start is a source of shame for Albert’s father, who “takes no pride” from the killing he did while in the army, passes from person to person as Joey struggles through the war. In one scene, a young German soldier gives it to his brother as the two are separated; in another a young French girl wears it as a ribbon in her hair. Regardless of who Joey finds himself surrounded by, this pennant unifies everyone in hope, reminding the audience of Morpurgo’s central theme: that we’re all the same, regardless of national borders. Sentimental? Perhaps. Powerful? Undoubtedly.
Spielberg is the master of such visual flourishes and it’s worth remembering exactly what cinema is before condemning War Horse for its “sentimentality”. Strip the medium down to its barest form and it is, literally, a series of visuals – still photographs passing across a beam of light which projects them onto a massive screen. Now, time for a little experiment. Look at your walls, look at your mantlepiece, look at your bookcase. Chances are, you’re looking at photographs – in a frame, on a canvas or within a photo album. Wherever they are and in whatever form they’re in, photographs dominate our lives, they help us relive happy memories and remember loved ones. Images are inherently emotional and our keeping of them inherently sentimental. Cinema, by projecting those images so dramatically in such a humongous way, automatically becomes an act of sentimentality – indeed due to its size and scope, perhaps the ultimate act of sentimentality.
Beyond the simple mechanics of viewing a film, our consumption of films is also deeply sentimental. Think for a moment about your favourite films. Then think about why you like them. Some of my favourite films are The Apartment, Magnolia, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jurassic Park and Star Wars. Why are these my favourite films? For a start, of course, they’re well-made films. But why do I love them, rather than admire or respect them as great pieces of art? Because they remind me of moments in my life. Jurassic Park was the first film to really make a big impact on me when I saw it at the cinema and Close Encounters and Star Wars were similarly significant moments when I viewed them on home video. The Apartment and Magnolia, meanwhile, mark happy times in my life and I’m reminded of those moments whenever I watch the films.
These are sentimental reasons, because cinema is sentimental. Those DVDs on your shelf are no different to the frames on your wall or the photos on your Facebook page and this is something to be celebrated. The very point of cinema is to make people feel something, to evoke an emotion and elicit a response. In other words, to create sentiment. If that’s wrong, then perhaps film critics need to reassess the identity of The Greatest Film Ever, Citizen Kane. For, when the film draws to a close and the audience finally learns the meaning of Kane’s dying word – Rosebud – Orson Welles creates a moment of pure sentiment. Beneath the corrupted exterior of this newspaper tycoon, we are told there lies the heart of a vulnerable little boy. Rosebud is another ‘S’ word. Rosebud is Kane’s childhood sledge.
About the Author: Paul Bullock
Copyright 2010. mag.Press was created in WordPress by Obox Themes.
4 Comments
Adam Zanzie
Excellent job here, Paul, and a nice defense of this film. When War Horse was first released, I got in a number of debates with critics who complained of the film’s more sentimental aspects. Although, I think the primary debate here is over the difference between sentimentality and actual “sentiment”.
Sentiment is a visceral reaction to something. Sentimentality, if I understand it correctly, is a sentiment of a very specific kind: happy, merry, traditional. And while War Horse has sentimental moments here and there, I’d agree with you that, overall, it’s more of an exercise is sentiment used wisely. I also agree with you about the Magnolia comparison, too; it may have been a film about depression, but Paul Thomas Anderson, like Spielberg, saw hope at the end, as opposed to nihilism.
A.O. Scott has it right, I believe, when he suggests in his own review that even though we all probably have a built-in temptation to resist Spielberg’s classical methods, it’s better to surrender to them. Why reject the pleasures of a movie experience as grand and as uncommon as War Horse? Life is too short for us to so easily dismiss a good thing.
17 Jan 2012 12:01 am (@adamzanzie)
Paul Bullock
Hi Adam.
Thanks for the kind words about the post – and thanks for being the first comment on my new site. It’s a great comment to start off with.
I think you’re correct about the sentiment/sentimentality difference, and I think they’re both acceptable in cinema – in fact, not just acceptable but necessary. As I say in my piece, cinema is about encouraging emotion, and War Horse does that wonderfully.
Your point about Magnolia is spot on too. I’m a huge fan of Paul Thomas Anderson, and I think along with Scorsese and Altman, there’s also an element of Spielberg to his work. Certainly the idea of family that runs throughout Boogie Nights has a Spielbergian element to it.
Finally, I think you’ve summed up my piece better than I have with your last line. “Life is too short for us to so easily dismiss a good thing.” A brilliant way of putting it!
Thanks again for a wonderful comment.
17 Jan 2012 08:01 am (@paulbullock)
James Clarke
Hi Paul.
Such an enjoyable and sincere piece here.
I think that the paragraph about photographs is really key and it prompted me to think, too, of the role of memory and (moving) photos in Super 8 . Maybe the connections are there in other Steven Spielberg-directed movies. We can add some of his films as producer to that cluster , too, I think.
The whole act of recording events and creating images to keep something alive in the heart and mind makes me think, too, of Jim in Empire of the Sun when he makes his ‘sanctuary’ of images by his bed in the camp.
James
17 Jan 2012 09:01 am (@@jasclarkewriter)
Paul Bullock
Hi James. Thanks so much for the kind words. Glad you liked the piece. And I’m so happy you used the word ‘sincere’ as that’s something I’m going for on this site. I want the content to be a personal reflection on movies, as, for me, that’s what cinema is: deeply personal.
I’m definitely going to have to look into the idea of the moving image in Spielberg films. Certainly there are suggestions of films in Close Encounters (Neary watching Pinocchio on the TV and, of course, the audio reference John Williams gives to ‘When You Wish Upon A Star’) and Jurassic Park (“What have they got in here: King Kong?”), but I think the film most indebted to Spielberg’s love of the moving image is Catch Me If You Can.
Not only is there the wonderful James Bond scene, but the look of the film – the bold colours, the costume and set design, everything down to the Saul Bass-inspried title sequence – is very much inspired by the way pop culture has depicted the 60s. I think it’s telling too that the film opens with the static of a TV set. In many ways, it’s Spielberg’s love letter to TV.
As for Super 8, I think the two most affecting scenes in that are all about watching and seeing. The first scene is the moment where the monster picks Joe up in the underground caves and, for the first time, opens his eyes – a very, very Spielbergian moment – the second is the moment where Joe and Alice watch home videos of Joe’s mother. It’s the idea of the moving image as a way of helping people connect with each other and themselves. This theme is also seen very strongly in Hugo and to a slightly lesser extent, The Artist. It’s been quite a year for films about films!
The act of seeing, and how that helps us communicate, is one of my favourite Spielberg themes. Whether it’s played sincerely – ‘The Spielberg Face’ as so perfectly exhibited at the end of Close Encounters and in Jurassic Park – or twisted – like in the eyeball-removing sequence from Minority Report – it’s always fascinating to me.
To bring it back to War Horse, it was there again in the scene where the reflection of Emilie opening the barn door is seen in Joey’s eye, the brilliant white of the light replacing the darkness of the pupil. It’s one of my favourite moments from the film and one that has, like the cavalry soldiers emerging from the fields on their horses or Albert’s friend becoming consumed by the gas, really stayed with me. I find it so sad that some critics have been so quick to dismiss moments as wonderful as these because of ‘sentimentality’.
17 Jan 2012 01:01 pm (@paulbullock)
Leave a Comment