This is a movie (based on a book that I didn't read, so anything that is irritating about it based on it's inconsistencies with that did not affect me) is about a number of things. The underlying theme is the desperation that came with the Great Depression, a time when 1 in 3 men were unemployed--something we would do well to remember as we struggle with the most recent financial debacle. Men who seek great riches are not about the greater good. Let's not forget that.
The story is told by Jacob Jankowski (Robert Pattinson, of 'Twilight' fame--he is solid but not brilliant in this role). He drops out of vet school when his parents are killed in a car accident and he discovers there is no money left. So he hits the road and gets hired relatively quickly by a second rate circus run by the masochistic August (played with convincing anger and malevolence by Christoph Waltz), whose wife Marlena (Reese Witherspoon) is both the star of the circus and the victim of her husbands paranoia and violence.
The star of this movie is Rosie, and elephant that August purchases to bolster his show. She is presumed to be dumb as a post, and while August treats her with the same violence he reigns down on everyone else in his path, Jacob soon tumbles to the fact that Rosie is in fact quite smart. She wants some water that is across the tent from where she is tethered, so she uses her trunk to pull up the stake holding her down, ambles over for a drink, then goes back to her original spot, using her trunk to put the stake back in the ground. She isn't about to run away, but she is going to be comfortable.
She is the central character--she is the good to August's evil. He underestimates her, and he pays the price.
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