Eating Disorders: Water For Elephants Movie

Thursday, 8 November 2012

Water For Elephants Movie

Essentially, this is a retelling of the standard love-triangle tale: the circus owner cum ringmaster (Christoph Waltz) has a beautiful wife (Reese Witherspoon), who is hopelessly attracted to the new kid on the circus train (Robert Pattison). We know from the start that there will be blood. “Whose blood?” provides the dramatic tension that propels the story. As the memories begin, Jacob Jankowski is a twenty-three year old Polish American preparing for his final exams as a Cornell University veterinary student when he receives the devastating news that his parents were killed in a car accident. Jacob’s father was a veterinarian and Jacob had planned to join his practice. When Jacob learns that his father was deeply in debt because he had been treating animals in exchange for just beans and eggs and had mortgaged the family home to provide Jacob an Ivy League education, he has a breakdown and leaves school just short of graduation. In the dark of night, he jumps on a train only to learn it is a circus train belonging to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. When the owner of the circus, Uncle Al, learns of his training as a vet, he is hired to care for the circus animals. This consequently leads Jacob to share quarters with a dwarf named Walter (who is known as Kinko to the circus) and his dog Queenie. A few weeks later Jacob is summoned to take a look at Camel, an old man who, after drinking Jamaican ginger extract for many years, can't move his arms or legs. Fearing Camel will be "red-lighted" (referring to the practice of throwing circus workers off a moving train as either punishment or as severance from the circus to avoid paying wages), Jacob hides him in his room.