This line from the Buddy Mondlock song The Kid sprang to mind right away as I watched the 2011 drama Water for Elephants,
in which a contemporary centenarian reflects on his experience in the
circus in 1931. The movie was a gift from my aunt, who came to town
with my uncle last week to visit my convalescing mom. One of two movies
that she offered as film night fodder, it appealed to her especially
because of the animals involved, particularly Rosie, the elephant
referred to in the title.
Robert Pattinson doesn’t stray far from the golden boy image he’s
presented as noble Hufflepuff Cedric Diggory in the Harry Potter series
and protective vampire Edward in the Twilight series. Jacob is
intelligent, sensitive and a bit coddled, having had a very happy
childhood with his Polish farmer parents. His world comes crashing
around him when, in the very midst of taking the final exam that will
grant him his veterinarian’s license, his parents are killed in a car
crash and he learns that all of their resources belong to the bank.
Grief-stricken and penniless, he takes to the rails and winds up on a
circus train. He has the skills needed to tend to the menagerie, but
dealing with deranged ringmaster August (Christoph Waltz) and resisting
the charms of his vulnerable wife Marlena (Reese Witherspoon) prove more
difficult.
Jacob is extremely likable, a compassionate soul who is about to receive
an intense education in how brutal the world can be. Marlena is a
gentle but tragic figure, a woman of deep empathy for the creatures her
husband abuses and an attraction to this young newcomer who is so much
kinder than the man she married. Pattinson and Witherspoon work
beautifully together, while the scenes with Waltz are fraught with
tension as he so effectively plays a smiling tyrant whose next move can
never be predicted. August’s brokenness is all too apparent, which
makes him pitiable despite the desire to see him removed from his
position and never allowed to hold sway over another again.
These three characters, along with the sweet and talented elephant
August hopes will revive his circus’s fortunes, are central to the point
that others are scarcely more than window dressing, but a side story
involving paternal circus hand Camel (Jim Norton) and standoffish,
short-statured Kinko (Mark Povinelli) helps draw us into the wider
plight of circus performers, while Paul Schneider’s endearing
performance as modern-day circus owner Charlie opposite Hal Holbrook’s
aged Jacob show us how the business has changed.
There is some real darkness in this movie that explores the cruel
underpinnings of a beloved form of entertainment. August is truly
monstrous, not only to his animals but to his human employees, thinking
nothing of having them heaved from the moving train when they misbehave
or he simply can’t afford to keep them. I shudder to think this was
common practice, but most of the film’s grimmer aspects are easy to
believe. Nonetheless, while the film is steeped in ugliness, there are
moments of piercing beauty, and the movie leaves us guessing right up
until the final moments just how badly Jacob’s stint with August’s
circus will end. The movie takes some cues from Titanic as it
shows the gritty underbelly of what at first seems glamorous and sets us
up for disaster, but we don’t know how encompassing that disaster will
be, and that keeps the tension cranked up high throughout.
While the PG-13 movie has little language and very limited displays of
sexuality, the violence is extreme at times, even if much of it is left
to the imagination. I would stick with the rating guidelines here and
avoid showing this to younger children, but teens should be able to
handle it, and it might even be well-suited to a high school history
class because of all the Depression-era issues it explores. While it’s
not an entirely happy movie, Water for Elephants is well worth watching.
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