I have recommended Sara Gruen’s novel, Water for Elephants, to many different people and most have come back to say that they loved it. The book was such a hit that the inevitable movie adaptation was made, and like most book-to-movie conversions, some things were lost in translation. In short, I really liked this movie, but I loved the book.

The movie begins with an elderly man (Hal Holbrook) visiting a circus at the end of its run. He is a bit confused about the location and is talked into coming inside by some of the employees. When some old photos jog his memory about circus life during the Depression, he winds up sharing some whiskey and his personal story with a young man who works in the carnival office.

Jacob (Robert Pattinson of Twilight) had his very bright future ripped away all at once when his parents died in a car accident. He lost his family and his home, and was unable to complete his last year of veterinary school. With no other options, he runs away from it all and follows the railroad tracks out of town and stows away on the first train that comes by. That train happened to belong to a large circus group, and from there his new life begins.

The circus is run by an abusive tyrant (Christoph Waltz of Inglourious Basterds) who happens to be married to the star (Reese Witherspoon) and regularly exhibits bi-polar behavior. When one of their star horses has to be put down due to hoof disease, it is replaced by a hard-headed elephant. Jacob is assigned the job of training the elephant, named Rosie, and this puts him working with Witherspoon. A romance develops, and her husband gets crazy violent when he figures out something is going on.

Although this is mainly a love story, it does feature some very brutal scenes of violence committed against animals. There is one scene where the elephant is stabbed repeatedly with a poker and it leaves the creature in an immobile bloody mess. There are also some scenes of domestic violence where Waltz’s character assaults Witherspoon in ways that will make you cringe. The purpose of this is to establish the need for her to get away from him, but it’s not easy to watch. This movie is rated PG-13.

Casting Christoph Waltz in this was perfect since he comes right after winning his Oscar for playing a Nazi. His character in this is very Nazi-like, so it worked well. I didn’t feel like there was much chemistry between Pattinson and Witherspoon, but this story is more about the tension created by Waltz and their love story doesn’t really take off until the movie is over. This is about what happened to put them together. The elephant also plays a major role in the story, and she was a scene stealer.

One aspect of the book that was left out of the movie was the meaning of the title. I forget exactly what it meant in the book, but there was a story to it and this wasn’t explained in the movie, so the title may seem weird to some folks. The book also contained a detailed description of jake leg whiskey, which was a type of prohibition-era bathtub concoction that was so poisonous it could cause paralysis. It is also in the movie, but the book offered a much better explanation. Other than a few minor things that probably wouldn’t have translated well to the screen or would have made the movie too long, I thought this was a pretty faithful adaptation of the novel.

In the end, you don’t have to read the book first to appreciate the movie, Water for Elephants. It truly is a wonderful story that includes a few great surprises, and I thought it had just the right balance of writing, acting, and storytelling to make it a notch above most of the stuff that gets made these days.

Recommended: Yes