DVD REVIEWS
WAR HORSE
(out of four) If you thought director Steven Spielberg couldn’t top himself for manipulating audiences, you didn’t reckon with War Horse, adapted for the screen by Lee Hall from Michael Morpurgo’s well-liked 1982 source novel. This handsome movie, triumphal almost from the get-go, opens on the lyrical green fields of England. Carried by Janusz Kaminski’s wide-eyed lensing and John Williams’ insistent score, we’re heading towards Devon, where the action begins with the war at home. The year is 1914. Dirt-poor and drunken farmer Ted Narracott (Peter Mullan) buys a frisky thoroughbred for his son, Albert (Jeremy Irvine), who promptly names him Joey. Ted’s wife Rose (Emily Watson) is furious: the farm needs a plough horse, not a show horse. But the British Army needs horses to battle the Germans on muddy European fields even more; Joey is tearfully sold to the war effort, but not before Albert vows to him, “I solemnly swear we’ll be together again.” Before that, however, there are many battles to be fought. Spielberg’s battle scenes are a marvel, and many heartstrings are tugged. Watching War Horse is like turning the pages of a very long children’s book, each chapter a different adventure. But the film succeeds in dramatizing the message that humanity must triumph even in times of great inhumanity, and even if it takes four legs to lead two. Extras include making-of featurettes and interviews.
BENDA BILILI!
On the poorest streets of Kinshasa, capital city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, even a dirty piece of cardboard is a status symbol. It means you have a place to sleep. It’s worth fighting over, and people do. The setting could hardly be more depressing, and the documentary
Benda Bilili! makes no attempt to hide it. From out of the gloom comes the hypnotic grooves of a band called Staff Benda Bilili. The name means “look beyond appearances,” and the members of this remarkable musical collective do just that. They celebrate their life in song and whatever moves they can manage. Many of them are paraplegics, unable to move their legs. Yet they all seem possessed of an irrepressible spirit. French filmmakers Renaud Barret and Florent de La Tullaye were working on a world music doc when they ran into Staff Benda Bilili, who get around on makeshift bicycles and other contraptions resembling something out of a Jean-pierre Jeunet film. Over five years, from 2005, Barret and de La Tullaye documented the band’s struggles to pull together, to record their first album and to simply survive. The band is also working toward a first European tour. Will they succeed? Extras include deleted scenes and background materials.