A train steaming desolately into the night. Carrying animals and humans, both equally desperate. Packed into cages, visible and invisible. The misery and the pain that creates the illusion of an “extravagant extravaganza” under the milky Big Top. A circus of miraculous animals who may be angry or hungry, clowns and performers who may have nothing to smile about, a shining showstopper leading a horse who may be dying painfully of a irreversible hoof injury. And the showstopper? Well, she could be a story no one has ever heard except in whispers. Francis Lawrence’s Water For Elephants makes you realise what a sweeping, beautifully nourished book Sara Gruen wrote on which the film is based.
Inspired by the book, the film is bursting at the seams with ambient imagery from the 30’s Depression that wrecked lives in America and then recreates the inner life of a circus desperate for revival. The circus train packed with men, women and beasts hurtles from town to town looking for an audience and one desperate night, a veterinary student Jacob Jankowski (Robert Pattinson) who has lost everything in a personal tragedy, climbs aboard and never gets off. Initially because he has nowhere to go and then because the paraphernalia of circus life captures his heart. The big white tent going up. The horses cantering in a rhythm. The acrobats. And a beautiful, remote, sad, golden woman, Marlene (Reese Witherspoon), who is the wife of the the brutal owner August Rosenbluth (Christoph Waltz).
August is a mercurial, unpredictable, abusive man who erupts into violent humour and rage frequently, gets employees thrown off the running train when he has no use for them, would rather have a dying horse perform than put him out of his misery and thinks all living things must learn who their master is.
Including his wife and Rosie, a gentle and beautiful elephant who he beats within inches of her life while Jacob and Marlene watch on helplessly and discover kinship and stirrings of a forbidden love. The hugely endearing elephant cements their bond while the nights and days around them are painted in water colours by cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto.
The only thing missing here is a real spark or a monumental passion between the lead pair to match the bestial genius of Waltz who is as hard to watch here as he was in Inglorious Basterds. But only because he exudes cold menace and evil from just a curl in his lip, a manic grin and an intent frown. Compared to his flesh and blood presence, the star-crossed lovers almost don’t make it to the credibility zone. Witherspoon can act out just about anything and this is just her thing after all the emotional spaces she inhabited in Walk The Line. She looks like the unattainable dream she is supposed to be. Long of limb. With golden curls kissing sculpted shoulders. Lithe and poetic as the star performer of the circus and stubbornly trying to make a one-sided marriage work but even though there is empathy between her and Pattinson, you don’t really sense anything elemental.
The star of the film is Rosie ofcourse who is more human than those who surround her as she steals liquor, flirts with her vet and in the end, wraps up the circus with a satisfying final blow.
Pattinson is a goodlooking boy and he has his moments when he smiles slowly, gazes soulfully and suffers silently. He has a quiet presence but not yet the early raw charisma of a DiCaprio or Depp. Maybe, he will grow languidly with time into the premature stardom the Twilight series has thrust upon him. The movie is a love story retold like The Notebook and a period set piece not quite Titanic in its ambitions but visually and emotionally engaging nevertheless. It is well told with some great lines like, “The world runs on tricks. Everyone plays.” And the animals move you to tears as they gaze at the crazy, violent human world with befuddled innocence. But thus far and no further. This could have been a far greater film if only while jumping off the train, Jacob and Marlene had made us feel what Jack and Rose did when they jumped off the Titanic.