The Tony Awards are rarely viewed as a prognosticator for Oscar glory. (That honor usually goes to film festivals and other film-centric awards ceremonies.) But at last night's Tony's, the near-sweep by War Horse, a play about a horse's travails in a Europe devastated by World War One, might signal big-screen success when the film versioncomes out in December. And it certainly doesn't hurt that Steven Spielberg is the director.
War Horse, based on the 1982 book of the same name by Michael Morpurgo, picked up five awards, including Best Play, and has been racking up similar prizes since its 2007 UK debut. Already, Spielberg’s film, which stars newcomer Jeremy Irvine as the young man who searches the charred ruins of war-torn France for his beloved horse, is a lock to pick up a Best Picture nomination—it’s Steven Spielberg and war, after all—but yesterday’s win makes the film an odds-on favorite.
Despite all the adulation, War Horse is still an undiscovered property for many audiences, but some believe Spielberg’s take on it will make the story a cultural phenomenon. For us, the opening 27 minutes of Saving Private Ryan, when the allied troops storm the beaches at Normandy, remains some of the most visceral and brutally realistic filmmaking we’ve ever seen. There’s a part in War Horsewhere the title character finds himself in so-called No Man’s Land, that hellish purgatory between the enemy trenches on the WWI battlefields, and we’re jonesing to see what he can do with that kind of terror. Anyway, let the Oscar forecasting begin!
