Water for Elephants (2011)

The idea of the film and how it was made is fantastic. All the scenes look real and they are full of excitement. The actors are playing their roles absolutely amazing.The main characters fit really well with each other. Even though in the movie the place that everything happens is the circus, people can feel that the story is so real and can happen to everyone in its own way.No matter if it is a bad character or a good one everyone is doing a great job. The movie shows a lot of things we can find in our own lives or realize that are missing in it. It shows the cruelness and that people are the real savages, not animals. It represents the true meaning of love and that you should never stop fighting for it, no matter how hard it is, because its beautiful.

one of films who impress. for the ordinaries sparkles - costumes, recreation of the air of past, young actors and an animal who becomes axis of a story from the circus universe. for the joy of justice. and for a sweet, dramatic, impossible love story. but, more important, for the science to preserve the spirit of novel, recreate a world who becomes inspired mix of the childhood memories, cruel challenges of life and the meet who change everything. America in crisis has a seductive portrait in this film about a long travel to the happiness. sure, it is a good state to discover Robert Pattinson escaping from the cage of Twilight series and doing more than a decent job. but the star is Christoph Waltz who gives great nuances to his August. so, see it !

I love Christoph Waltz, I mean, I truly love him doing his craft. I loved him through all his German television shows that I used to endure, I loved him through the broken subtitled movies I used to watch in seven-minute increments on YouTube, I loved him through the horrible campy bit parts he used to get; the ones where I'd have to watch a whole movie to see him for 6 minutes. What I'm getting at, is: I loved him before he made it big in America in Quentin Tarantino's 2009 WWII re-imagination, Inglourious Basterds. That 2009 breakthrough was especially fun for me because I also love Quentin Tarantino, so the powers that be in cinema land really smiled upon me with that pairing. The moral of the story is that I see everything Christoph Waltz acts in, as frustratingly underwhelming as that may be, sometimes. In 2011, my love for all things Christoph brought me to Francis Lawrence's feature also starring Reese Witherspoon and Robert Pattinson, Water for Elephants. In a prominent role for Christoph, playing the ringmaster in a traveling circus in 1931, Water for Elephants exposes the struggles of a young man who lost his parents in the midst of the Great Depression. Exposing how important a sense of belonging is to those who wonder the world alone, Water for Elephants is an expose in the aspects of the human psyche we often avoid. Jacob Jankowski (Robert Pattinson) has his life planned out. He is one final exam away from finishing his veterinary science degree at Cornell University, he is the object of affection from a beautifully smitten girl in his class, and he has dreams of grandeur to become a veterinarian like his father who immigrated to the United States and instilled in his son that your dreams can come true if you have enough sense to see them through. All of Jacob's perfectly thought out plans disintegrate when he finds himself homeless after a car accident claims the lives of both of his parents. Lost, with nowhere to go, Jacob hops on board a train traveling in the night. Unbeknownst to him, Jacob has climbed aboard a traveling circus train of the Benzini Bros. After meeting a few circus hands who help get him temporary work, Jacob is introduced to August (Christoph Waltz), the circus ringleader, to see if he can stay on employ permanently with the circus. After a tense meeting with August, when he realizes Jacob has an ivy league veterinary education, August names Jacob the circus vet. While checking in on the animals, Jacob meets Marlena (Reese Witherspoon) the beautiful horse-riding main attraction, and wife of August. Instantly smitten by her beauty, Marlena and Jacob find ways to spend more and more time together, which does not fly under August's radar. Marlena takes several beatings at the hands of August, which do not diminish when he sees she and Jacob spending so much time together. Jacob attempts to persuade Marlena to run away from the circus with him and start a life together, but can she leave the man that took her from the shop corner and brought her under the lights of the big top?I love a film told in flashback. Water for Elephants opens with a seasoned man visiting circus grounds disappointed to learn that he missed the show. The man then goes into the office while circus hands work to find a number for his caretaker and alert them that he is on the grounds. Meanwhile, the man goes on to describe his experiences of circus life, captivating the circus owner. I found this a great way to tell the story for this movie. There were loads of wonderful Christoph Waltz moments, but nothing tops that entrance! Seeing him in shadow only while his voice booms to the audience under the big top was a brilliant way to show how commanding and domineering he was in the film. You can see in Water for Elephants, however, his first film after Inglourious Basterds, his second American film, that he is already being type-casted, which is a true shame for the amazing versatile actor. Pattinson was much better than expected; having never seen him in any films, I wasn't sure what to expect. Witherspoon was alright, I never really care for her acting style, and it didn't help that I didn't buy her relationship with August; something about their pairing came off incredibly fake. Water for Elephants was a beautifully shot film with great images of animals all throughout, filled with a fantastic score and an Austrian actor that completely stole the show.

Casting choices for this film are up there with the worst of them. Main character cast for his fan-base of teenage girls and certainly not his acting ability which is cringe inducing during most scenes. Yes folks,Robert Pattinson is the offending 'actor' here playing Jacob Jankowsky, played at the start of the film by Hal Holbrook. The old Jacob who is around 95, is discovered by circus staff long after the end of the show in a parking lot having run away from his nursing home after hearing the circus was in town. On discovering the old man once worked for a historic circus, the manager asks him to tell his story, so queue the narrative and now it is 1931. Jacob is a student vet who is given the tragic news of his parents demise just 2 minutes into his final exam, a rather unbelievable point that is central to the story. Would they have been any less dead had they waited 118 more minutes later,at least letting him finish his degree?Anyway I digress. As they do not, having confirmed that his apparently well known parents were indeed his parents, dropped out of uni and discovered that his parents had financed his unfinished degree with a loan secured on all their assets thus leaving him with nothing, he decides to head for the city in search of work. He ends up jumping a train that happens to be a circus train where an alcoholic old workman with no authority at any other time in the film has the authority to stop the circus owner's evil henchman from throwing him off the moving train and later helps him get a job in the circus as it's vet. He spots the circus owner's wife Marlena, played by Reese Witherspoon who is (well meant to be) a stunningly beautiful and super talented performer, the star attraction of the entire show no less, for whom he develops an infatuation. Now I have nothing against the actress as such, however the director in casting her again got it horribly wrong again. She is far too old for the character she plays and is not especially beautiful nor a performer so she just looks plain wrong as Marlena and I see little point delaying saying that her performance is probably the worst acting from her that I have seen. Whether she was trying to match her costar I know not, but she is very wooden and completely devoid of personality; not even slightly believable. Waltz plays August, the ruthless and psychotic circus master. He seems to suit such personalities rather well and it's thanks to his performance that this film isn't a complete train- wreck. (Sorry! Couldn't resist) When Jacob discovers a horse essential to Marlena's star act has a terminal condition and shoots it, August aquires an elephant and promotes Jacob to it's keeper. Initially unaware how to control the creature, there are problems which cause drama, especially when August looses his rag and attacks the poor creature to the disgust of his wife and Jacob, in fact everybody. While mad at August, Marlena starts falling for Jacob and things develop between the two, however following the assault, Jacob discovers the elephant does in fact perform really well but takes Polish commands. Due to this, their affair goes flat for a while until August next goes evil. This occurs one night when he notices a look between J and M looks far from benign. He then comes close to possibly killing J although is prevented by one of his henchmen.The 2 then jump from the now moving train as it leaves town and flee to a hotel, where they finally sleep together. Barely finished, August's henchmen find them, grab Marlena and leave him a bloody mess. After they jumped off the train, an enraged August had his henchmen throw several workman off the moving train, killing two and engaging many more. The next show, some of the enraged folks sabotage the show causing chaos. In the resulting mayhem, August again tries killing Jacob, but Marlena stops him so instead he tries to kill her. This time he is stopped by the elephant,who also happens to kill him. J and M go off together, join a rival circus.. happily ever after.So a thoroughly believable story then, made all the more believable by 2 main characters, one by their inability to act, highlighted by their tendency for sudden cheesy grinning where their only other expression - pouting feels unsuitable to him; the other by seemingly not having her heart in it, perhaps she felt as out of place as she looked but couldn't turn down the fat pay cheque? If nothing else the film will serve as an indisputable example to others of both the result of terrible casting and how you can sadly still pull in the viewers on the strength of cast member's fan base regardless of the quality of the production. The few stars I gave were purely for the performance of the elephant and some of the other veterans involved and not at all the leading pair or director.