Water for Elephants - My Notes

After last week's struggle I managed to finish my notes.  I had not been looking forward to the film, but in the event it was better than several of the reviews had suggested.  There was a weakness in the central love triangle but whether this was due to casting or the script I'm just not sure.

Here are my notes:

Water for Elephants

USA 2011                    121 minutes

Director:                      Francis Lawrence

Starring:                        Reese Witherspoon, Robert Pattinson and Christoph Waltz

 Nominations and Awards

• Robert Pattinson won Best Actor at the 2011 Teen Choice Awards
• A further six nominations

“There’s something endearingly old-fashioned about a love story involving a beautiful bareback rider and a kid who runs off to join the circus.  What makes Water for Elephants more intriguing is a third character, reminding us why Christoph Waltz deserved his supporting actor Oscar for Inglourious Basterds.  He plays the circus owner who is married to the bareback rider and keeps everyone else in his iron grip.”

Roger Ebert

As an old man Jason (Hal Holbrook) meets the proprietor of a small travelling circus that he has visited and reveals that he once worked in a circus and was present during one of the most famous circus disasters of all time.   The proprietor asks him to share his story, and he tells how as a young man (now played by Robert Pattinson) after the death of his parents in a car crash he drops out of veterinary school and joins a circus where he uses his skills to look after the health of the circus animals and becomes involved in a tragic love triangle with Marlena (Reese Witherspoon) and her husband (Christoph Waltz) the owner of the circus

The film is based on the best-selling novel by Sara Gruen with a screenplay by Richard LaGravenese who has written screenplays for more than 15 films, including The Bridges of Madison County (1995), The Horse Whisperer (1990) and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010).   However it is the involvement of Robert Pattinson in the film that attracted most publicity.  Following the global success of the Twilight series of films his involvement in Water for Elephants was an attempt to broaden his range beyond that of the brooding vampire.  He received good reviews for his performance of this film and stood his ground against the other two principal actors both of whom have won Oscars for their performances in earlier films.  Following the completion of the Twilight series he has played the lead role in Bel Ami (the first feature film from acclaimed stage directors Declan Donellan and Nick Ormerod) and is currently filming Cosmopolis directed by David Cronenberg.

Here's a link to the trailer: