re: The Cabin in the Woods. TulaneLSU's 2011-12 movie review thread

War Horse I do not often write jeremiads, warning that this generation's wickedness is so great, surely God's wrath will fall upon it. I do not romanticize the past, saying that the morality of ages past is superior to the wanton ways of contemporary nations. Caliginous, Cimmerian perspectives of the present ignore the evils of the past. They assume that somehow people are different today from what their ancestors were. At the same time, I am not drunk with the possibilities of progress and revolution. As Weil said, "Religion is not the opiate of the masses. Revolution is the opiate of the masses." One aspect of human nature, or decreated nature, if you believe in the Christian view of a good creation, that it seems we just cannot shake is that of violence. There is nothing as inhumane as the violence perpetuated in war. One could argue that the WYHI threads are just as bad, but with such thought, there is the possibility of metanoia and redemption. The violence and death associated with war make that possibility impossible for so many who are killed too soon. The past is littered with human inhumanity to other humans in war. Cynically, I do not see much change possible, as we continue to find new and more efficient ways to kill others. To be human is to be at war. But to be human is also to be religious. Some will claim that the two -- religion and war -- are so inextricably linked to blame one on the other. I see it differently. That these two fundamental aspects of the human experience are at odds with each other, but because they are so much a part of the being of humans that they are confused. Religion, I believe, saves us from war.

To be of two natures at once, completely, this is what in Christianity has salvific power. Jesus is fully human and fully divine. It is in Jesus's divinity that we can be saved. It is in Jesus' humanity than we are saved, for as Gregory as Nazianzus wrote, "That which was not assumed is not healed; but that which is united to God is saved." Salvific incarnation has permeated philosophy and Western culture for two millennia that many of our most beloved figures in literature and, now, in film, are characters who have two natures, and use those two natures to show humans the greatness we have been given ["You have made him a little lower than God, And You crown him with glory and majesty" (Psalm 8)] and the pure workings of a creation that is set to follow the established beautiful laws of creation.

I suggest that War Horse uses its main character, a horse, to bridge the gap between humans and the creation. The horse, Jimmy or whatever his name was, opens a new realm to people by being one of them -- having the excellences we value: courage, love, purity, honor, devotion. But he does not discard his creaturely being. He does not try to make himself into a god. He does not build a Tower of Babel. He does not build a golden calf. He does not start war to increase his kingdom. He does not build weapons to kill for profit and power. It is his acceptance of his creaturely nature, something humans reject each time we go to war, as life is only God's to take, that makes him a Jesus-like figure. Being subject to the natural law placed on creation, none more important than to see ourselves as servants to a higher thing, i.e., the physical laws for animals, or a higher Being, i.e., God for humans, which in natural theology are essentially one, allows the horse to bridge the divide and to bring peace to warring sides. His atonement is not easily missed by the observant viewer. His blood drips from a crown of barbed wired thorns. His blood shows the nations that violence destroys and has no good use.

While I do not believe the writers intentionally made the horse a Messiah figure, he undoubtedly becomes one. And it works beautifully. In one of the best scenes of 2012, as the horse makes a mad dash away from the inhumanity of mechanical war only to be brought down by it, we see the power of sacrifice and of love. And we see later how humans have the capacity to rise above it, if we would just claim our God-given inheritance of love and treating others as our brothers and sisters instead of our enemies. The beginning is slow, and I was not impressed by the relationship the young boy has with the horse. It was uninteresting and boring. But the being of the horse itself redeems this movie and makes it good. 8/10