A depression-era romantic drama, Francis Lawrence’s Water for Elephants gets the period details just about perfect and bungles badly with its most important attribute: its love story. An anemic pairing of two stars that produces no fireworks and at times is almost tedious to watch, the personal drama between two fated-to-be-mated souls suffers from significant miscasting. In every other respect, however, the movie has much to offer. Too bad its central tenet is so fundamentally misguided and uninteresting.
Water for Elephants (Blu-ray + Digital Copy)
Directed by Francis Lawrence
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Year: 2011
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 1080p AVC codec
Running Time: 120 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 English; Dolby Digital 5.1 French, Spanish
Subtitles: SDH, Spanish
Region: A
MSRP: $39.99
Release Date: November 1, 2011
Review Date: October 28, 2011
The Film
3/5
An elderly escapee (Hal Holbrook) from a nursing home arrives at the Circus Vargas looking for a job as a vet. He recounts his history with the Benzini Bros. Circus, an outfit well known during the early years of the depression. One exam away from earning his veterinary degree, Jacob Jankowski (Robert Pattinson) learns that his parents have died in a tragic accident and his home and property have been taken by the bank in a foreclosure. Deciding to ride the rails, he jumps the train belonging to the Benzini Bros. Circus, a small outfit run by the emotionally kinetic August (Christoph Waltz). His wife Marlena (Reese Witherspoon) is the circus’ star attraction with her trained horse act, but Jacob sees that the lead horse is dying and puts it out of its misery, an act that alternately enrages and endears him to August who takes the young fellow under his experienced wing. They find a new attraction for Marlena in the form of bull elephant Rosie. Jacob stumbles onto the fact that the elephant understands and obeys Polish language commands, and with his help, the act saves the circus. However, the more time he spends with the married couple, the more he falls for Marlena, and she returns the feelings but knows that with her emotionally unstable husband, they’d never be able to act on them.
It doesn’t appear that any expense has been spared to bring Sara Gruen's runaway best seller to the screen, and all that time and money have really captured the look and feel of the early 1930s. The circus atmosphere is hyper-realistic (the setting up by the roustabouts and the multi-colored and yet cheesy midway are wonderfully realized), and among the film’s best sequences are the parades and circus promenades and acts that regularly dot the film (Reese Witherspoon’s ease in dealing with both the horse act she begins the film with and later with Rosie the elephant are both exceptionally professional looking) and offer merciful relief from the forced and artificial love story at its center. The grand passions in the feelings between these two alleged soul mates are nowhere to be found in the movie, and continually placing the Jacob character being forced to watch August and Marlena celebrate with his love mere fingertips away from his own arms isn’t dramatically frustrating as much as it’s just plain ludicrous. The climactic circus calamity that ends the story of the Benzini Bros. is a superbly directed sequence made all the more horrifying by the real animals on the loose, scads of panicking people, and the ultimate face-off between the film’s protagonist and antagonist.
The casting of Robert Pattinson is the film’s chief misstep, a cold, emotionally detached performer who simply generates no romantic heat at all with his co-star Reese Witherspoon (to his credit, he does seem to summon up some looks of concern when the elephant is being tortured). For her part, she handles all of the circus business with great aplomb, and her scenes with Christoph Waltz crackle with the kinetic energy between two opposing forces that makes for great drama. But in every pairing with Pattinson, there is this emotional void: neither actor appears to be feeling anything despite what needs to be happening, and it leaves the movie without a real center. Christoph Waltz, of course, is the opposite of his male co-star: a force of nature with a romantic’s soul but a psychotic’s temperament. His is by far the best performance in the movie. Hal Holbrook’s bookend portrayal of the elderly Jacob is sincerely moving and quite wonderful. Jim Norton’s elderly Camel as the circus hand who brings Jacob into the fold is another excellent performance, not very showy but very real. Mark Povinelli as Jacob’s bunkmate is likewise a small but effective performance.
Video Quality
4.5/5
The film has been framed at 2.35:1 and is presented in 1080p using the AVC codec. Image quality on the whole is excellent with sharpness superb in every scene showing off enormous detail in, say, Rosie’s wrinkled skin or the textures in August’s red ringmaster’s coat. Colors are generally solid, but flesh tones can go a little hot in some scenes though they’re usually very realistic in appearance. Black levels are only average. The film has been divided into 32 chapters.
Audio Quality
4.5/5
The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 sound mix does not quite capture all of the ambience of the circus in its available soundstage channels (the rears seem to get stinted occasionally), and James Newton Howard’s score is likewise not given quite the spread that it deserves. However, when the sound effects are well utilized, we get tremendous panning as the train moves through the soundstage and an outstanding use of the LFE channel (the climactic stampede sequence is really something). Dialogue is well recorded and resides in the center channel.
Special Features
4/5
The audio commentary is by director Francis Lawrence and screenwriter Richard LaGravenese. Though they lapse into silence on occasion, the two craftsmen generate enough anecdotes about the production to make the commentary one fans of the movie will enjoy listening to.
All of the bonus video featurettes are presented in 1080p.
“Raising the Tent” is a 15 ¾-minute piece allowing director Francis Lawrence, production designer Jack Fisk, costume designer Jacqueline West, and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto time to discuss their research in making the film so true to its time period.
“Secrets of the Big Top” gives a brief 12 ¼-minute history of the American circus including the circuses roaming the country in the 1930s and how they were able to move from town to town in such short periods of time.
“The Star Attraction” is a fun vignette on Ty, the 42-year old elephant who plays Rosie in the movie. There is also footage of star Reese Witherspoon training on Ty for the circus scenes in the movie. This runs 9 ¼ minutes.
“The Traveling Show: From Page to Screen” features original author Sara Gruen, director Francis Lawrence, producer Andrew Tennenbaum, screenwriter Richard LaGravenese and select members of the cast talking about the parts they played in getting the production off the ground. It runs 9 ¼ minutes.
“Spotlight: Robert Pattinson” is a 4-minute focus on the leading man of the film and the glowing tributes to him from his director and fellow cast members.
“Working Without a Net – The Visual Effects of Water for Elephants” is a 22 ½-minute montage showing all of the scenes in the movie that required extensive digital effects in before and after additions. The montage is accompanied by selections from the score for the movie by James Newton Howard.
“Feature Performer Reese Witherspoon” is a brief 2 ½-minute look at star Reese Witherspoon’s work with trainer Sebastian Stella who preared her for her work with the animals in the movie.
The film’s theatrical trailer runs 2 minutes.
The disc is BD-Live ready, and the net does offer one exclusive bonus: “Stars of the Circus” which features Slad Reynolds who was the animal trainer on the movie supervising the sixty animals used in the production of the picture. This runs 3 ¾ minutes.
The disc begins with promo trailers for The Descendants and Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.
The second disc in the set is the digital copy of the movie.
In Conclusion
3.5/5 (not an average)
A period romantic drama that gets the period right and the romance wrong, Water for Elephants does make a very handsome looking and sounding Blu-ray disc. Fans of the film will also enjoy a nice variety of bonus features offered on the disc.
Matt Hough
Charlotte, NC
