British actress Emily Watson waves as she arrives on the red carpet to attend the screening of the movie "Oranges and Sunshine" during the Rome Film Festival at Rome's Auditorium, Saturday, Oct. 30, 2010. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Happy Birthday, Emily Watson

It would take a special dedication to fault-finding to walk into a movie called WAR HORSE and sit there getting all steamed up about how it isn’t devoted to men.

Jan 14, 2019 3:00PM EST

Rosa Lyster @rosalyster

Rosa Lyster is a writer who lives in Cape Town.

Not to be confused with Emma Watson, Emily Blunt, or Emily Mortimer: three women who are very different but who have similar names to you and are also white with brown hair and who, like you, seem as if they could have had a starring role in the film War Horse. A certain “could have been in the film War Horse” energy, if you see what I mean.
It was only you that was in War Horse, though.
Here was what Roger Ebert had to say about War Horse: “Most people will enjoy it, as I did.”
This is very cutting, although it’s hard to put one’s finger on exactly why. Is this what is known as damning with faint praise?
David Denby said: “The horses themselves are magnificent, and maybe that’s reason enough to see the movie.” What does he mean, “the horses themselves”?
David Denby also said: “We never think to ask why a nineteen-year-old boy is so obsessed with a horse, or why the entire production is devoted to an animal, while ten million men are dying all around him.”
Hahahha. Where is the emphasis there? Is it a nineteen-year old boy? Or is it a nineteen-year old boy? Which is weirder, in the eyes of David Denby?
As for his second complaint, come on.
There are plenty of movies about war, with almost all of them devoted entirely to men.
This one is devoted to a horse.
It would take a special dedication to fault-finding to walk into a movie called WAR HORSE and sit there getting all steamed up about how it isn’t devoted to men.
That’s no way to watch a movie.
I would not advise anyone to watch The Boxer with that kind of mean, beside-the-point spirit, for instance.
The Boxer, as you will recall, is a Jim Sheridan movie that is nominally about ex-IRA man Daniel Day Lewis returning from a 14-year stretch in prison and attempting in his own repressed, tracksuit-wearing way to rise above the bitter factional disputes that are still ripping his community apart even as the ink is trembling on the end of the pen that is about to sign the peace deal.
In fact, the movie is about you and Daniel Day-Lewis not getting to have sex, with you turning in a performance of truly devastating thwarted horniness. My word.
Just staring at him behind all kinds of door frames, both of you absolutely BEGGING for it, and nothing.
Daniel Day-Lewis is not as traumatisingly dreamy as he was in In The Name of the Father, where even a prison uniform that looks exactly like Postman Pat’s outfit does absolutely nothing to diminish his transcendent hotness. Still, he is very beautiful in The Boxer, and you guys didn’t get to have sex even once.
That’s what the movie is about and let me tell you it is more than enough.
Perhaps if I was David Denby I would have written a review along the lines of “We never think to ask why Emily Watson is so obsessed with Daniel Day-Lewis, or why the entire production is devoted to cock-blocking two extremely horny people when Belfast is falling to pieces all around them.”
That’s no way to watch a movie.
Happy Birthday.