Water for Elephants

I went to see Water For Elephants the other night for mother's day.

It's been ages since I've been to the movies, and I always enjoy the experience far more than just renting a video. But pretty soon after the movie started, things were happening that really annoyed me.

Movies often annoy me, but this one was annoying in quite a different way from usual. I mean, movies are often stupid, but this was stupid in a different way. It was like the story was made up by a bright 14 year old who didn't know the way the world really works.

So in this movie, we were asked to believe, that when you're 2 hours away from being a vet, sitting your very final exam, your lecturer might call you out of the exam to tell you some bad news, and then you can never be a vet. No, you can't get an aegrotat pass. No, they don't wait until you've finished the exam, or give you a chance to re-sit. Even at a private university where your parents paid mega-dollars to get you your degree. Basically, you just have to leave town.

The movie continued in this surreal way for the next two hours. It would fatigue me to describe every painful time that I was unable to suspend disbelief, but they were numerous. Aside from this very intrusive flaw, there was also a confusion, I thought, about what this movie was actually meant to be about. Clearly, there was a theme of "animal welfare", explored through the treatment of a circus elephant which was beaten until it was too ill to perform. The bad guy, who beat the elephant, also beat his wife at times, even though she too was part of the "star act" of the circus which he owned. As my kids would say, he had anger management problems.

So, I guess so far you could say that the message was that it is bad to beat animals and people. OK, that's nice and simple. Only we were also meant to be considering the morally complexity of the fact that this is the Depression of the 1930s and there are people whose only chance of eating that day is if the animal performs in the circus. And the bad guy suggests that anyone who cares about animal welfare, hasn't seen a hungry human. So you sort of expect that this movie is going to explore this tension. But then, it doesn't. Like I said, the bad guy beats the elephant, not in order to get it to perform, but just because he has anger management problems. So we don't face those uncomfortable questions about when and how it's acceptable to make economic gain out of animals. We just get to feel outraged by a man beating an elephant for no sensible reason.

And that's pretty much as far as the movie takes us. Which doesn't surprise me now that I've heard the author of the book interviewed on National Radio. I haven't read the book, but judging by her conversation, I don't think she's thought much about this subject really either. Obviously, she thinks it's bad to beat elephants. But she thinks it's kind of cool that she once visited an ape that made her a cup of tea. So questions like, "Is captivity, by its very nature, wrong for some of the more intelligent species of animals?" pretty much sailed on past her. The tea sure tasted good though!

If you'll excuse the plot spoiler, read on. In the final scene of the movie, the big cats are freed (maliciously, it appears) and run amok amonst the circus crowds. Astonishingly, they don't eat anybody, despite being surrounded by meat. Indeed, one of them stands quietly by while the human characters enact their highly dramatic (but stationary) denouement. (Look carefully and you'll see the lioness on the right in the very last shot.) At this point my companion and I were convulsed by giggles. I'm sure this was not the intended reaction, but it was definitely the most enjoyable part of the movie.