3 out of 5 Popcorn Kernels
The circus life is well...no circus. Water For Elephants is a movie that surprised me. Although it is suppose to be a love story - it becomes a story about many kinds of love; of who you are and what your destiny holds.
The title of this film is very off putting, and indeed, the beginning of this film gave me doubts altogether, because there were some unbelievable scenes that I just had to ignore in order to get past them. But once past, the story took off, not because of the love of the lead characters, but from the third-wheel that comes between them.
Water For Elephants begins in flashback, as Jacob Jankowski (Hal Holbrook) stumbles to a local circus as they are setting up, to wait for his son. While there he meets one of the workers, and they begin to talk about Jacob's life in the circus when he was much younger.
We travel back with Jacob (now Robert Pattinson of Twilight fame), where he is taken from a class at Cornell University where he is studying to be veterinarian, only to learn the devastating news that both his parents were killed in a car accident - his funding has stopped. He leaves town to hop a train to a better future, and finds himself on a circus train owned by the Benzini Brothers heading out to their next gig.
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| Brown-nosing at the office |
Why such an educated man, with well known parents didn't have other options in such a small town could be due to the depression era of 1931 - or the coincidence of him stumbling upon a circus train who happens to own an injured horse which he quickly diagnoses (a diagnosis that keeps him from being thrown off the train), or the discussion he has with the circus owner August (Christopher Waltz) on the rooftop of the moving trains...all were a stretch for me to believe, but the beauty and movement of the film at this point keeps one very captivated.
Then Jacob sees the owners wife, Marlena (Reese Witherspoon), and is in instant awe. He keeps his calm, until the moment she sees that he is as compassionate about animals as she, and they form a bond...and that bond in the mists of Authur's cruelty with both animal and human alike, causes these two to fall in love.
The love story is good, but it is truly the reaction of Authur (showing why Christopher Waltz deserved that Oscar for Inglorious Bastards), is what tugs and pulls the story into a direction that was very surprising. We see the circus through his eyes; how it is set up, the sacrifices of the people involved, the connection of the animals involved, the struggle and sacrifice in a time of poverty that one has to make in order to live any sort of life at all...and it is fascinating.
Then comes in the elephant Rosie. I have never known for an animal to appear so human before, and this humanity is what carries the audience in every scene she is in. She is the outsider dragged into a den of destruction and mayhem, and we sympathize with her, and how she is eventually treated.
Water for Elephants is one of those movies you have to be ready for...it is not filled with a CGI, or explosives, or fantastic car chases. It has small elements of a classic, and if the union between Jacob and Marlena were ripe with biting dialogue, it would be; it would be an equal match for the bi-polar antics of Authur. Its like having sugar on a jalapeno.
If you want a break from the box office hype and hyperbole - then take this one. It's a little watered down, but its still a really big show.
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