Critics can be baffling. They lauded Hugo, Martin Scorcese's love-letter to classic Hollywood cinema, and voted Michel Hazanavicius' The Artist, a celebration of the golden age of Hollywood, onto the Oscar throne. Like the two films, Steven Spielberg's War Horse runs off themes of nostalgia and was nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards, filling out a surprisingly robust roster of past-loving films from 2011. But unlike Hugo and The Artist, War Horse's initial critical reception was lukewarm, and it continues to be an underdog in the Oscar race. Eric Melin of Scene-stealers.com, a certified critic on RottenTomatoes.com, even called the film "a trite, manipulative soap opera run through the lens of World War I."

He couldn't be more wrong. War Horse is sometimes a tad too grand, but it's grand in the sense that it takes your breath away. It makes you believe that larger-than-life characters and landscapes can lift you out of the real world in a way that no other medium can. It reminds you of how you felt seeing your favorite film for the first time. Unfortunately, Spielberg's ode to, well, Spielberg, will be a dark horse in the Oscar race, an unlikely contender against The Artist. But if initial doubters saw it twice, like I did, their minds very well could change. The second time, pieces of the plot fit together more elegantly and the cinematography seemed more beautiful. I'm not sure if The Artist has that kind of lasting value.

War Horse is about an English country boy and his horse and the way the Great War changes them. The broodingly dramatic, yet ultimately unspectacular, Jeremy Irvine plays Albert, while 14 different horses were used as the boy's childhood love, Joey. Albert's father, a retired soldier-turned-farmer, buys Joey at an auction one day, though the horse is too wild to plow any field. The inevitable bond Joey and Albert form isn't just in service of the movie—if Albert doesn't train Joey to turn the family's rocky pasture, they won't have a harvest to pay the rent.

Yet before the first act seems to close out, World War I begins. Just like that, the perspective shifts to Joey's, who is passed from owner to owner. And while the horse's almond-colored face can only span so many emotions, through a series of brilliant close-ups we sense his fear, his hope and even his feeling of love when he meets a black mare on the battlegrounds. The browns and bright greens of the English countryside have turned into a grey, hellish landscape—think of the first scene of Saving Private Ryan. Yet unlike that film, War Horse retains an innocence throughout, artfully censoring the war's gore and emphasizing the emotional consequences instead. That's not to say the gravity of World War I, with its yellow poison gas, mud trenches and barbed wire, doesn't hit the viewer hard in the stomach—a rare feat for a PG-13 movie.

As a war film, is it not ridiculous that the protagonist is a horse? What about the fact that everyone speaks English, including the German soldiers and the French villagers? True, War Horse isn't without flaws, but the film's splendor makes you forget about them. When I saw Schindler's List for the first time, I was offended that everyone spoke English. But the dramatic oomph of that film quickly overrode my doubts. With War Horse, Spielberg has again crafted a magnificent and larger-than-life film, with John Williams supplying a score that may stay with you even longer than the film's characters—Williams will no doubt win an Oscar for Best Original Score. Spielberg, on the other hand, has won Best Director at the Oscars twice, one for Schindler's List and one for Saving Private Ryan. In many ways, War Horse is just like those films—unforgettable, superbly emotional and a film only Spielberg could have made. Despite a declining box office revenue and inevitable Oscar snub, I hope audiences see it as such.