I wasn't sure what to expect with the movie WATER FOR ELEPHANTS. Was it a circus film? A romance? A heavy handed drama? The result was a combination of all three with a tad less heaviness than I expected. And the combination works to form a touching story.
The film opens in the present with an aging man (Hal Holbrook) apparently lost and at a circus. When he's offered help finding his way to the retirement home it becomes apparent he worked once in a circus, the Benzini Brothers Circus, a circus whose history had the worst accident ever. He was there and begins to tell the current circus' owner what happened.
Jacob Jankowski (Robert Pattinson) is about to graduate as a veterinarian from Cornell University in 1931 when word reaches him his parents have died in a car accident. With no funds and no inheritance (they mortgaged the house to put him in school), he hits the road in search of work, something not plentiful during the Depression. He hops a train only to find he's jumped aboard a circus train and must pay for his way.
The next day an older circus hand named Camel takes him under his wing and shows him how things operate, putting him to work until he can talk to the boss, August (Christoph Waltz). Before he can be tossed off the train, he tells August that he's a veterinarian and can help with the horse he saw earlier limping along.
August gives him a chance to help and he looks the horse over under the watchful eye of the star horse rider and August's wife, Marlena (Reese Witherspoon). While Jacob and Marlena see the horse will not survive long, August wants to keep it performing till it keels over. Jacob shoots the horse but alter is nearly tossed from the speeding train as August informs him that he is the sole ruler of this group and never to disobey him again.
Time moves forward and Jacob learns all the various tricks of the circus while at the same time taking care of the animals. These are hard times and a star attraction is needed to make the show the best there is. Fortune smiles on the group in the form of a leftover attraction from another failed circus, an elephant named Rosie.
Rosie and Marlena are to be the top item in the show, but Rosie isn't moving at the speed in learning a routine that August wants. Numerous painful prods with a pike get her moving but also wound her, something neither Jacob nor Marlena approve of. After a show in which Rosie escapes, August beats her to near death. An accident happens when Jacob says something to her in Polish and she understands. This opens the door for a well performing elephant.
Beneath all of this is a bit of flirtation going on between Marlena and Jacob that August is unaware of. The combination of romance between two people that almost literally fall into each other's path, the unknown world of the circus and the volatile temper of the man who runs it all make for a romantic drama that could end in tragedy. Only time will tell.
Pattinson and Witherspoon will be the draws to this film. Witherspoon for her fresh faced all American appeal and Pattinson for his heartthrob notoriety gained with the series of TWILIGHT films. But each displays a deeper acting ability than their previous films have delivered. While watching this film you forget that its a movie, that these are actors and you feel that it's the story of two people who share something in common that brings them together in a cold, cruel world.
Waltz, noted for his evil portrayal of a Nazi commander in Tarrantino's INGLORIOUS BASTARDS, shows that his acting is not a one note talent. While his character is as evil if not more so in this film, it is far distant from the Nazi in the previous. There is a certain amount of sympathy for this character that in the hands of a different actor might not have shined through. But Waltz delivers on the Oscar nominated promise seen before.
In all this film harkens back to the old days when movies were larger than life and filled with images of worlds we normal humans rarely had the opportunity to visit with the exception of a few moments in a darkened theater. This is grand old fashioned movie making at its best. It's entertaining, tells a story and is so well made you don't notice that it's even a movie. And those are the best kind of all.
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