Based on a children’s book from 30 years ago and adapted into a highly successful stage play five years back, War Horse has been described as “a tale of loyalty, hope and tenacity set against a sweeping canvas of rural England and Europe during the First World War”. It’s now been taken to the big screen by Steven Spielberg.
The last British soldier from the First World War died in 2009, but though too young to have experienced it directly, the film’s stars Jeremy Irvine and Emily Watson have their own tales to tell.
Emily explained to STV’s Grant Lauchlan: “When I was in my mid-20s, my grandmother – who was then in her late 80s and who had never talked about it – sat me down and told me about her brother.
“She absolutely worshipped the ground he walked on. When she was 12 and he was 17, he lied about his age and ran off to war.
“He was injured and then taken to a German prisoner of war camp, and he died a week later. But he sent a letter home to say ‘I’m complete fine, don’t worry about me.’ And it said: ‘Please pay my bank man, I owe him a pound.
“It was the last honourable act of a young man, a 17-year-old boy who knew he was dying.”
She added: “He had a posthumous medal, and a photograph of him that she’d slept with every night of her life by her bed, and she sobbed her heart out as if it had been yesterday.
“I can barely still talk about it, it was so powerful. To have that pointless, awful grief replicated in every family throughout the country, it’s such a strong bruise on our national psyche that’s not really known about now.”
Talking about filming in the realistic-looking trenches, done to avoid heavy use of CGI, Jeremy said: “I can’t even begin to relate to what these men and young boys went through.
“But as an actor to go running across no-man’s land, and you’ve got a real rifle, and there’s machine guns firing at you and explosions going off about your feet and stuntmen flying through the air, all you’ve got to do is react. Especially for my first film, it was terrifying.”
So what do its stars think is the secret behind the War Horse’s endurance that has seen it adapted into a big budget Steven Spielberg movie?
Jeremy Irvine, who plays the lead role, told Grant: “Michael Morpurgo is one of those incredible writers who can just connect, especially with kids.
“I read the book when I was about eight or nine, and remember it having a big impact on me then. The story of this young boy on a horse, there’s something that we can all related to there.”
Emily actually saw the play when eight months pregnant. In terms of emotions, she joked: “I was absolutely hopeless.
“I said I really wanted to go to the theatre before the baby was born, because I wouldn’t be able to see anything for ages. ‘What shall we go and see? We’ll go and see War Horse.’
“After about 10 seconds I turned to my husband and said: ‘I don’t think I can sit through this.’ You instantly fell in love with this horse, which was articulated by puppets, and then knowing what was coming – this utterly pitiful waste of life and destruction and hell that was the trenches of the First World War.
“I think Steven has made an anti-war film for kids.”
Jeremy also talks about the daunting nature of being a struggling actor then getting a role under Spielberg. How was it to work for him?
Emily said: “It was great. I arrived on Dartmoor not knowing what to expect. I came round the corner and there was the biggest unit I have ever seen far into the distance, and I thought ‘Oh my God, Hollywood is here.’
“But actually, when we got on set it was a very intimate. He was very connected with what you were doing, talking to us all the time and giving us lots of notes. It was creative and lovely.”
- Get the full lowdown on War Horse from Moviejuice, which shows on STV on Friday at 8pm. Follow the show on Twitter and find us on Facebook.
- Watch the trailer for War Horse
- And find clips from the movie here
