After his parents' death, Jacob Jankowski is left penniless and homeless. Events lead him to joining the circus as their vet, working under their unstable boss August whose violent tendencies give everyone reason to be cautious around him, including his beautiful and quiet wife Marlena, whom August is very possessive of and who Jacob finds himself soon falling in love with. Written by
Plot Synopsis:
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When Jacob Jankowski,parents dead and suddenly adrift, jumps onto a passing train, he enters a world of freaks, drifters, and misfits, a second-rate circus struggling to survive during the Great Depression, making one-night stands in town after endless town. A veterinary student who almost earned his degree, Jacob is put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It is there that he meets Marlena, the beautiful young star of the equestrian act, who is married to August, the charismatic but twisted circus owner. He also meets Rosie, an elephant who seems untrainable until he discovers a way to reach her.
The movie begins with an elderly man (who is actually Jacob - Hal Holbrook) outside after a circus performance, looking for his ride, when younger workers notice him and ask if he is lost or needs to go back to the home. He insists that he doesn't belong in a home and becomes quite upset when they persistently ask, but then apologizes for his rude behavior. The young men bring him inside from the rain, and while one man goes about calling the old folks home, the other notices Jacob looking at the pictures hanging on the wall. The young man is shocked to find out Jacob knew about the circus and even more impressed when he says he was there, right in the middle of it. It is explained that it was the most famous circus disaster in history. The young man passes him an old photograph of a young woman sitting on an elephant's trunk, and Jacob tears up. The young man asks Jacob to tell him what happened in 1931, and so the story begins.
The movie flashes back to 1931, as a young man (younger Jacob - Robert Pattinson) was preparing to take his final exam at vet school. He lived at home with his parents who had left Poland to seek a better life in America. The police show up during his exam to break the news that his father and mother were killed in a car accident. After identifying the bodies, he ends up throwing up in an alley.
The news gets worse when it is explained to him that the bank is taking all his family's assets due to his father's defaulting on loans. The young man insists that his father was a good man, and the family home was paid for. He shortly realizes that his parents had mortgaged their home to send him to vet school. Jacob leaves his boyhood home with one suitcase and plans to walk to Albany where there would be jobs, but he didn't make it to Albany. He hops on a passing train and meets some older men, who offer to help him find work the next day.
They arrive at an open field, where a large group of men file out of the train and begin constructing the circus tent. Jacob is in awe of the entire process, but is soon thrust into shoveling manure. While working, a pretty woman catches his eye (Marlena - Reese Witherspoon) as she is talking to horses, asking one if it's okay. It is pretty clear she is part of the act and Jacob walks over to take a look at the horse's leg. She quickly turns away from him, taking the horses with her. Jacob follows her and witnesses with amazement her circus act with the horses. He asks one of his fellow workers about her and is told she is the boss's wife and you don't talk to her.
Jacob is introduced to the August (the boss) and impresses him enough to become the new veterinarian. He is then introduced to Marlena and she, once again, brushes him off. He examines one of the horse's injuries and explains to August that he should be put down. August tells him that is unacceptable and to make it work so the horse can perform through the season. He stumbles upon Marlena, who is comforting the injured horse and they have a short conversation about how the horse should be put down. Jacob grabs a gun, but before pulling the trigger, Marlena tells him it will be his last decision if he goes against what August says. He pulls the trigger and Marlena tells him she will be sad to see him go. August finds Jacob and threatens to throw him off the train.
To help fill the money void left when the star horse was put down, August buys an elephant named Rosie and insists that, with Marlena in the mix, he will sell out crowds. It is quickly established that Marlena both appreciates and adores the way that Jacobs cares for animals and they bond over training the elephant. Later, Jacob is invited to drinks with August and Marlena to celebrate the addition of Rosie to the circus. During drinks, August states that he wants Jacob to be the Bull Man, and Jacob explains he is not a real vet, as he did not receive a degree. August shockingly doesn't mind and they drink a cheer to Rosie. After an awkward moment with August, who is very drunk, Marlena puts him to bed. Jacob asks if he should go, and Marlena tells him to dance with her just once and then he can go. They dance and nearly kiss before she tells him he should leave.
While training the elephant, August uses the bull hook too aggressively for Jacob's and Marlena's tastes, but they keep silent. Later during Rosie's first performance, with Marlena atop her, August uses too much force to try to get a more exciting performance out of Rosie. Rosie freaks out and runs from the tent, forcing Marlena to grab a pole at the exit of the tent before being carried off on the stampeding elephant. Although the crowd cheers at Marlena's great gymnastic move, August is enraged. After the workers coax Rosie back to the circus, he takes the bull hook and beats Rosie with it. Jacob tries to stop him, but is held back by other workers, and Marlena stands outside Rosie's train car with her hands over her ears until Rosie's shrieking stops.
Later, Jacob discovers that Rosie is able to take commands that are spoken in German, and August couldn't be happier. All three of them go out to celebrate and, with August away from the table, Marlena and Jacob have a conversation about her past. At the end, she asks Jacob, Where were you when I was 17? The party gets raided (Prohibition Era), so Jacob and Marlena flee into an alley, far away from August. They share a kiss, but Marlena pulls away and tells Jacob not to follow her.
Jacob and Marlena act as if nothing has happened between them, it's business as usual, and the circus is selling out shows. During a surprise celebration for Jacob (due to him discovering Rosie's talents), August senses something a bit too intimate when he notices an exchange between Jacob and Marlena. Later, August discovers Marlena and Jacob at her tent, and confronts them in an unconventional way. Marlena almost has August convinced there is nothing between her and Jacob, but he rejects her story. A fight breaks out and Jacob is forced to jump off the train, but not before convincing Marlena to jump with him.
They find sanctuary at a hotel, and make love, but in the morning are discovered by August's henchmen. A bloodied and beaten Jacob regains consciousness only to discover Marlena is gone. He makes his way back to the circus and finds his closest work mates are not in their bunks. Knowing how August is, Jacob becomes enraged with thoughts of them having been killed (it is later explained they were thrown off the train, landed on a rock field, and did not survive). He sneaks into August's tent, to find Marlena lying with him. He has a knife in his hand and is about to kill August, but Marlena sees what he is about to do and convinces him otherwise. They meet the next morning and discuss their escape plan, which will be after the matinée act. While waiting for the show to be over, he hears the roar of the crowd change and rushes into the tent. The workers let the wild animals out of their cages, including the tigers and bears. This was done as payback for August's having had two of the workers (Jacob's closest work mates) killed. As the crowd rushes to get out, August encounters Jacob and begins hitting him with a pipe. Marlena sees what is happening, and tries to stop him, but is quickly taken down by August. He begins choking her, while his henchmen attend to Jacob, who is trying to get to Marlena. Rosie senses what is happening, just as Jacob begins speaking German to her, commanding her to pick up a spike and hit August with it. August dies.
Jacob becomes a licensed veterinarian, and he and Marlena get married and start their own act. The movie returns to the present day and older Jacob explains that he and Marlena had five kids, and they kept the horses and Rosie. After many years, Rosie passed away, and Jacob explained that Marlena cried for days as Rosie had been part of their lives from the beginning. The young man asked what happened to Marlena, and he told him she passed away in her bed, still beautiful. Jacob says that he was able to give her everything he ever promised her. Jacob then asks the man for a job as a ticket taker for the circus, saying there's nothing wrong with him other than that he is old. The man agrees, saying that Jacob will go down in the records book as the oldest man to run away with the circus. Jacob laughs and says, I'm not running away, I'm coming home.
Sara Gruen wrote the novel 'Water for Elephants' as part of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).
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Hal Holbrook had been recently widowed in real life when he filmed his scenes.
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Channing Tatum, Kyle Gallner, Anthony Fitzgerald, Andrew Garfield and Emile Hirsch all auditioned for the role of Jacob Jankowski.
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Scarlett Johansson turned down the role of Marlena.
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Sean Penn was cast as August but dropped out.
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In a deleted scene of Vanity Fair (2004), Reese Witherspoon plays Robert Pattinson's mother. In "Water for Elephants," they play lovers.
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Both Reese Witherspoon and Robert Pattinson have starred in different movies titled Twilight; Witherspoon in Twilight (1998) and Pattinson in Twilight (2008) and its sequels.
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The screenplay for this film was featured in the 2009 Blacklist; a list of the "most liked" unmade scripts of the year.
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The owner of the circus at the beginning mentions the Hagenbeck-Wallace Wreck and the Hartford Fire. These are actual circus disasters.
On June 22 1918 a troop train crashed into the Hagenbeck-Wallace circus train because the driver fell asleep and did not see the warning signs about the stopped circus train. 86 people were killed and another 127 were injured.
On July 6 1944 the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey big top circus tent at Hartford caught fire and killed 169 people and injured over 700.
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Robert Pattinson played in a movie with a character named Jacob in the movie Twilight (2008)
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The spike and chain is a method used to condition young elephants. Shackled to a short chain with the spike driven into the ground, the young elephant struggles until it breaks the skin around its shackled leg. That painful memory is used to control the full grown elephant, even though it could easily pull out the spike as an adult. Rosie accepts Jacob by giving him the spike and ultimately kills August with the same.
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The Empire State Building is seen in the distant NYC skyline, complete with its TV tower. The tower wasn't added to the building until 1951.
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Double yellow center lines were not used on most roads in the United States until 1971.
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August says Jacob is an Ivy League grad. Although the term "Ivy Colleges" was used in the early 1930s, "Ivy League" was first used in the Christian Science Monitor on February 7, 1935. The "Ivy League" wasn't officially established until 1954.
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When Marlena, Jacob, and August drink Champagne in a New York speakeasy, they drink from fluted glasses, but saucer glasses were used commonly in 1931.
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Several shots prominently display a follow-spot, with the Strong manufacturers name in clear view, which wasn't available until the mid-50s.
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When August hits Marlena, her diamond necklace disappears and reappears throughout the scene.
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The night Jacob and Marlena run away, when Marlena rushes in Jacob's compartment, she wears a black satin robe over her dress which can also be seen when they are standing over the edge of the train ready to jump. However, when they jump and start walking away from the trails, Marlena wears only her dress. The satin robe reappears when they get in the hotel room.
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After the altercation at the hotel, the bruises on Jacob's face keep changing between scenes.
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As Jacob shakes Earl's hand, when he is about to meet August for the first time, the powder on Jacob's shoulders is gone.
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While in the speakeasy August leaves the table that he, Marlena and Jacob are sitting at. Marlena is smoking a fairly short cigarette. In the next scene, the cigarette is noticeably longer.
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When Marlena first appears with her horses and Silver Star before the performance, the horses wear halters. However, in the circus ring when she is working them at liberty, they don't have halters on. Cut to Marlena as she takes her bow, the line of horses rear behind her and all have on halters again.
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After their first dinner together, August is very drunk and Marlena carries him in their bedroom. When she comes out again, where Jacob is sitting, she pulls the drapes together, but doesn't close them completely - there is a significant gap between them. However, when Jacob leaves after Marlena has asked him to, the drapes are completely closed.
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When Rosie escapes from the big top and is eating cabbage in front of a store, a police officer is restraining her. When Camel and Jacob come to get her, Camel pours liquor into a pail. Despite the movie being set in prohibition, the police officer thinks nothing of the liquor.
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Rex the lion is supposed to be without teeth, but in many shots can be seen with all of his teeth intact.
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When Jacob is going to stab August in the bedroom Marlena has a black left eye. The next morning when she comes to visit Jacob the black eye is gone.Actually, it's not a black eye. It's her make-ups that is blurred.
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circus|train|elephant|traveling circus|circus vargas|fear|ringmaster|falling in love|1930s|horseback riding|abusive husband|domestic violence|no title at beginning|determination|show tent|clown makeup|love on the run|bad temper|foreign language|jealous rage|narration|death of parents|three word title|hand on butt|orphan|old age|retirement home|university student|animal abuse|brutality|circus tent|parade|older woman younger man relationship|gun|circus performer|circus horse|lion|dog|dwarf|husband wife relationship|historical fiction|dancing|older version of character|leaving home|big top|trapeze|clown|love triangle|elephant trainer|animal in title|veterinarian|death of mother|death of father|based on novel|
AKAs Titles:
Argentina - Agua para elefantes
Bulgaria (Bulgarian title) - ’ода за лонове
Brazil - gua para Elefantes
Canada (French title) (dubbed version) - De l'eau pour les l phants
Colombia - Agua para elefantes
Czech Republic - Voda pro slony
Germany - Wasser fr die Elefanten
Spain - Agua para elefantes
Finland - Vett elefanteille
France - De l'eau pour les l phants
Greece (transliterated ISO-LATIN-1 title) - Nero gia elefantes
Greece - εŒ για ελέ†αν„ε‚
Croatia - Voda za slonove
Hungary - Vizet az elefntnak
Israel (alternative title) (Hebrew title) - Mayim la'pilim
Italy - Come l'acqua per gli elefanti
Lithuania - Vanduo drambliams
Mexico - Agua para elefantes
Norway - Vann til elefantene
Peru - Agua para elefantes
Poland - Woda dla sloni
Portugal - gua aos Elefantes
Romania - Apa pentru elefanti
Serbia - Voda za slonove
Russia - Vody slonam
Russia - ’од‹ лонам!
Slovenia - Voda za slone
Slovakia - Voda pre slony
Turkey (Turkish title) - Askin bys
Vietnam - Nuoc Cho Voi
Certifications:
Argentina:13 / Australia:M / Canada:PG (Ontario) / Finland:K-12/9 (2012 reform rating) / Germany:12 / Ireland:12A / Japan:G / Malaysia:U / Netherlands:16 / Peru:14 / Philippines:PG-13 (MTRCB) / Portugal:M/12 / Singapore:NC-16 / Singapore:PG (edited version) / South Korea:15 / Spain:12 / Sweden:11 / Switzerland:12 (canton of Geneva) / Switzerland:12 (canton of Vaud) / UK:12A / USA:PG-13 (certificate #46688)
Movie Details:
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