My Pal Joey

I went to see ‘War Horse’ (Spoiler Alert) at the weekend.  I greatly enjoyed the film and so by the squeals of it did the thirty five assorted members of the South Dublin Girls Pony Club in the six rows in front of us.  Some of them must have come straight from mucking out and the unforgettable smell of manure and wet horse provided a fitting accompaniment to the creative powers of Spielberg et al.

The star of Warhorse is of course a horse and like all horses he was once a foal and the film begins with his birth on the Devon moors.   Frankly, this part of the film was an eye-opener.  I never realised that foals were so big when they came out and to watch the little one unfold his spindly legs and stagger up on all four hooves (horses don’t do learning to crawl) was quite something.

I wasn’t the only one impressed because also watching the birth was Albie, a young lad of thirteen going on twenty-one, with the face and nature of an angel and a bum like two eggs in a handkerchief, who falls in love with our foal on first sight.   Sadly (as is often the case with thirteen-year-old-love-at-first-sight) said love was not immediately reciprocated and there follows an excruciating couple of scenes with Albie trying to pluck up courage to offer a carrot to Foal who is of course completely ignoring him.

In real life, this would probably have gone on for a couple of weeks until Foal was sold, Albie discovered girls and the same process begun all over again only with the object of his affections having two legs rather than four.   This being a Spielberg film, however, the inevitable deus ex machina occurs and we’re transplanted to the local horse fair where, heartbreakingly, Foal and Mamma Foal are separated (Reader, I blubbed).

Off with Mamma to God Knows Where and a bidding war commences for Foal (a thoroughbred, wouldn’t you know) between a moustachioed Bounder type in an atrocious check jacket and a bearded Worzel who alternates swigging from a hip-flask with describing Foal in terms more appropriate to a new-wedded bride (“Arr, he’s a beauty alright”) than a horse to be purchased for farm labour purposes.   We immediately know that the bearded drunken bloke is going to win the bidding (and probably lose the shirt off his back in the process) but is he a good ol’ drunk or a bad ol’ drunk?  Can Foal be trusted with him?

Leading Foal, bearded drunken one returns home where we know he’s a good ‘un when Albie comes running out to meet him (yes, he’s Albie’s dad, isn’t that a coincidence?).  Albie is delighted but Albie’s mother, Drunken Dad’s faded-but-still-sparky wife, is not very pleased to know that Drunken Dad paid thirty guineas for Foal and is even less pleased to find out that he did so by outbidding Check Jacket who it turns out is the local landlord.  However nought matters because boy hath Foal (promptly re-named Joey) and there follows mutual bonding over a bucket of oats before the inevitable rent-collection day comes round.

The rent has to be paid and the only way to do it is to plant and sell a crop of turnips which necessitates plowing the top field and there’s no horse to do it but Joey.   It’s a mucky day and the entire village turns out to watch and neither Drunken Dad nor Put-Upon Mum, quite frankly, is any help whatsoever to poor Albie but by gum, he and Joey manage to do it and everything’ll be all right as long as the weather stays good for the turnips.  There then ensues a further halcyon period with shots of Albie riding Joey all over the countryside outracing cars and impressing pretty redheaded girl clones of Kate Winslet in Titanic before the rain sets in and the turnip crop is destroyed.  Oh yes, and the First World War simultaneously starts (the fact that August 1914 was a largely rainless month appears to have been ignored by the film makers).

Drunken Dad is left with no option but to sell Joey to the troops and he’s lucky enough to attract the attention of an extraordinarily nice officer (Sensitive Captain), who promises the grief-stricken Albie that he’ll do his best to look after Joey.    A tearful Albie tries to enlist (“I look old enough” – yes you do kid, really you do – that’s because you’re played by a 21 year old) but is turned down and apart from a brief but tearful scene in a turnip field this is the last we see of his bum-like-two-eggs-in-a-handkerchief for the next hour and a half of the film.

From now on it’s all about Joey (or Francois, or Friedrich, as he subsequently comes known at different parts of the movie) and to start with it’s off to Officer Pony Club with him.   At this point Benedict Cumberthatch enters the film as the officer in charge of Sensitive Captain’s cavalry regiment and things change from My Little Pony to Blackadder Series 4 faster than you can say ‘steel helmet’.

There is a practice cavalry charge at which Sensitive Captain and Cumberthatch try to outrace and outstare one another at the same time, and Sensitive Captain, on Joey, just squeaks home ahead of Cumberthatch’s mount.  This is then followed by a real cavalry charge at which Sensitive Captain and Cumberthatch again race one another without looking at what they’re actually riding towards – more specifically, a German artillery battalion.

The next thing we see is a riderless Joey galloping through a forest, leading to the conclusion (subsequently confirmed) that Sensitive Captain has been killed.  Cumberthatch, unfortunately, hasn’t been because the next scene shows him standing in the forest surrounded by German officers who are looking at him as if he were mad.  ‘Why, says the German Officer very slowly, ‘would anyone think of attacking an artillery battalion on horseback?’  Cumberthatch doesn’t have an answer.  I suspect this is meant to be the movie’s Lions Led by Donkeys moment.

Joey, also captured in the forest, changes side and is led off to pull ambulances for the Germans. His previous experience ploughing the top field means that he has no difficulty in Taking the Harness, something which, as Nice Ambulance Boy helpfully points out in case we’re too stupid to spot it, has probably saved his life.   Alas, Nice Ambulance Boy comes to a sticky end a couple of minutes later when, after absconding to save the life of his underage brother, the pair of them are caught hiding in a windmill and shot for desertion.

Surprisingly, the troops who catch and shoot Nice Ambulance Boy and his brother don’t retake possession of the horses they deserted on and these horses (Joey and Cumberthatch’s mount, natch) are found the next day by a charming little French girl whose grandfather owns the windmill.   Halcyon days again ensue, although various hints dropped as to poorliness on the part of the charming little French girl lead us to believe that this Relationship Will Not Last.

Charming Little French Girl. That's Joey on the right and Cumberthatch's mount on the left by the way.

Indeed it doesn’t because the very first time the charming little French girl gets up on Joey (on her birthday, naturally) she rides right into a gang of German troops (the same ones, from the look of it, who’ve pillaged her farm earlier) who take back Joey for artillery pulling.   From the timeline this is 1915 or so and artillery pulling is a tough job on a horse but two or three minutes later it’s 1918 and mirabile dictu Joey is still alive and only a bit bedraggled, although Cumberthatch’s mount, still alongside him, is on his last leg (literally).

Actually it’s a bit difficult to tell at this point whether it’s 1916 or 1918 because although the writing on the screen says it’s 1918 it also says that it’s the Battle of the Somme which in fact occurred in 1916.  However it appears from various subsequent events in the film that this is the last push of the war so presumably they got the battle but not the year wrong.  Also confirming that it’s 1918 is the fact that Albie (too young to enlist in 1914) is there on the British side of the Battle as a fairly experienced old hand; he’s still carrying around pictures of Joey in his wallet and looking at them though, which does make one wonder about his real age, never mind his sanity.

In any case in the course of the Battle Albie’s best friend (slated for death from the first moment he appears on the screen) explodes in a mist of gas, Albie saves the landlord’s son’s life (“We Devon boys stick together”) and is temporarily blinded by the gas what blows up his friend.  Meanwhile, on the German side of the lines, Joey, traumatised by the death of Cumberthatch’s mount and the sight of a large tank, bolts for No-Man’s Land and ends up entangled in barbed wire mid-way between the British and German lines.  There follows a nice scene in which both sides realise that, no, that’s not a cow out there, and, this being an endangered horse rather than an endangered man, head out with their respective secateurs to rescue it.  This leads on to a very civilized discussion between Peter from Dusseldorf and Colin from South Shields as to how to cut the barbed wire off Joey without blinding him (they do it together, aw).

A subsequent toss of the coin gives Joey to Colin rather than Peter, and as Colin leads Joey along the British trench (how he actually got a large injured horse down into a twelve foot deep trench in the first place is something I would be very interested to know) everyone takes off their caps and salutes.   However Joey is not safe yet because he has an injured leg and needs to get some medication into him before tetanus sets in.  The doctor running the casualty station (did I mention this is the same casualty station to which the blinded Albie has also been taken?) does not, understandably, see a horse as more deserving of anti-tetanus medication than a human being and tells a minion to shoot the bloody beast.

At this point Albie, having heard that a horse (note: ‘a’ horse) has arrived into the casualty station, hoots like an Owl being yon special call he developed for Joey back on the moors; Joey turns his noble head from the pistol about to shoot him and sees a uniformed Albie, blindfold over his eyes, groping his way towards him (Reader, I blubbed again).  The gun does not go off, the boy and his horse are reunited and Utter Bliss again ensues, confirmed by the next scene showing Albie with his eyesight recovered – thankfully so as the thought of him ending the film with Joey leading him around like a giant guide dog was more than I could bear.

The War is now over but we still need another lesson in British bureaucracy and another tear jerking demonstration of All That Is Best in Human Nature before we can be allowed to go home.   Joey, being an Officer’s Horse, can’t just leave with Albie – instead he has to be auctioned off.  Although Albie’s entire regiment give what is left of their pay to help him buy back Joey (bet their wives’ll love that, when they get  back to them) he is outbid for the horse by none other than the Grandfather of the charming little French girl of the windmill.

It was then my heart started beating faster because I am an incurable romantic and right from the point at which Little French Girl dropped her bucket of water when she saw Joey for the first time I had been hoping that she and Albie would get together.   Sadly this is not to be because Little French Girl (cause of death unspecified) is now lost to us and Joey is all that Gran’pere has left of her.  However, on seeing the evident bond between Albie and Joey, Gran’pere realises it is time to let go (presumably having realised that a horse, no matter how good, is no substitute for a granddaughter) and lets Albie have Joey.

Heigh ho and it’s on to the last scene of Albie riding home across the moors to Put-Upon-Mum silhouetted against the setting sun. Drunken Dad, a veteran of the Boer War himself, comes out to shake his hand and welcome him home – just possibly, to a life of poverty, deprivation and post-traumatic stress, but we’re not shown that bit and why should we be?  Maybe Albie, Joey and his family did live happily ever after.  I do hope so.

I hope that this has given some idea of the plot of the film.   As for critical discussion, I have a very simple test for measuring whether a film is a good or a bad film and that is whether it leaves you feeling in a better mood than when you went in – why pay to be made miserable?  On that test, this was a good film.  As a bonus, there were some good battle scenes and it was fascinating to see what No-Man’s-Land looked like (hell incarnate, as expected).

My two criticisms are as follows.  Firstly, too many coincidences; in particular, the plot should have taken a leaf out of ‘Black Beauty’ and told the story of Joey without having him return to his original owner at the war’s end.   Secondly, although there was a nice mix of good and bad characters without too much regard to nationality, taking it a step further and showing both good and bad in the same character – other than Drunken Dad who was probably the only realistic person in the movie  – would have been even better.

All in all, not quite ‘My Little Pony’ – not quite ‘Gallipoli’ either but as I mentioned very popular among the Pony Club set (it took ten extra minutes to get the parking tickets validated because the two women in front of us were arguing about whether or not the use of the whip on Joey, in the context of ploughing the turnip field, was justified) and I suspect will have set the trend for more History Through the Eyes of Animals Movies.

The parody videos have already started and because I know some of my readers suspect me of being a prude and others suspect me (with even more justification) of not having a sense of humour I am going to surprise you all by linking to this one called ‘Shut Up Woman, Get on My Warhorse’.   Not only did I lol at the music but it also has some nice clips from the movie.

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