WATER FOR ELEPHANTS – francis lawrence – 4.1 / 10

It’s not terribly surprising that former music video director Francis Lawrence has, with Water for Elephants, made a handsomely mounted but ultimately superficial film.  It is surprising, however, just how perfunctory the film is.  There’s less going on beneath the surface of this film than there is even in something as brain-dead as Fast Five.  What you see is what you get and not a bit more.  And while the 1930s setting provides for a lot of pretty pictures and some nice art direction, that’s not nearly enough to sustain a two-hour film.

The story, such as it is, concerns Robert Pattinson’s Jacob as he attempts to find himself by running off with the circus.  Along the way, he meets lots of ‘colorful’ characters, but each and every one of them, including Jacob himself, is given one-- and only one-- character trait.  Jacob is looking for direction in life after the sudden death of his parents.  (In the film’s clumsiest moment, he’s told of their death during the final exam of veterinary school.  His teachers couldn’t wait a half hour and let the kid finish the test so he could graduate?)  Christoph Waltz’s ringmaster August is capital ‘E’ evil.  Jacob’s roommate Kinko is suspicious.  And so on, up to and including Reese Witherspoon’s love interest Marlena, whose one and only character trait is that she’s petty.

Marlena is also, unfortunately for Jacob who is immediately smitten with her, married to August.  So Jacob spends the whole film pining for her until he’s ultimately able to convince her to leave August for him.  This happens during a scene in which Jacob tells her, ‘You’re a beautiful woman and you deserve a beautiful life.’  He doesn’t say, ‘You’re a wonderful woman and you deserve a wonderful life.’  No, her beauty is her only meaningful attribute.  When other characters talk about her, all they talk about is how attractive she is.  At no point in the film is there any indication that Marlena has any kind of internal life whatsoever.  She is merely a beautiful trophy to be possessed by whatever man is most gallant or worthy or whatever.  She’s an object, not a person.

This wouldn’t, in itself, be terribly problematic except that the 1930s portion of the story is actually the story within the story.  In the present day, an elderly Jacob is relating this story to the manager of a modern circus.  And because this is Jacob's story, the audience sees everything from his point of view and through his eyes.  So the fact that Jacob sees Marlena in such a one-dimensional way means the film sees her that way as well.  And asking the audience to care about and invest in a relationship in which one half of it is merely an object to be possessed makes it very difficult to care about.

Having not read the bestselling book on which Water for Elephants is based, I can’t say whether or not this one-dimensionality is a carryover from the novel.  But from the evidence on display here, I can’t imagine what would have attracted so many people to this book.  Maybe it was just the interesting backdrop of a Depression-era circus.  There are a few interesting bits of circus slang that crop up here and there.  And the mechanics of moving such a huge enterprise from town to town might be, I imagine, relatively interesting.  But other than that, there’s nothing here to suggest that there was any reason this story needed to be told.