Rose is distraught: He was meant to bring home a plow horse at a low price and has purchased a sleek thoroughbred. But Albert and Joey bond, and Albert trains the horse to accept a collar and plow their stony fields. Then World War I breaks out. Drunk as usual, Ted sells the horse to the Army. Albert vows he will see it again. Now begins a series of self-contained chapters in Joey's life, as the horse passes from British to German hands, has a respite on a French farm and then finds itself helping to drag a cannon much too big for the team.
All of this is embedded in front-line battle footage as realistic as we saw in the landing at Normandy in Spielberg's " Saving Private Ryan. Surely few were worse for private soldiers trapped in the muddy, cold, desolation of the trenches. Horses thrown into this satanic chaos were confused, terrified and sometimes driven mad. Joey meets a series of masters, most of them on both sides men who respected horses.
Yet war is no place for sentiment, and as an officer explains with brutal realism, a horse is a weapon and must either be used or destroyed. Surely some of the best footage Spielberg has ever directed involves Joey and other horses running wild outside the trenches, galloping in a panic through barbed wire lines and dragging wire and posts after them as their flesh is cruelly torn. There's one of those scenes of temporary truce when soldiers from both sides meet in No Man's Land to share wire-cutters and set the horses free.
All of this is magnificent. But it reduces the center of the film to a series of set pieces. The narrative thread is supplied by Joey, who is such a helpless protagonist that watching his adventures becomes painful — especially, I suspect, for younger viewers. A famous film by Robert Bresson , " Au Hasard Balthazar ," follows a humble donkey through years of good and bad times, and shows all of the events as implacable chapters in the book of its life.
Bresson makes no attempt to elevate the donkey; its lot is the common lot of all dumb animals in a world of arbitrary cruelty.
Spielberg ennobles Joey and provides an ending for the film that is joyous, uplifting, and depends on a surely unbelievable set of coincidences. I suppose it must be that way for us to even bear watching such a story. Joey Yep, War Horse is told from the point of view of a horse.
Namely Joey, "a spindly-looking Albert Narracott Joey tells us early on that "only one man was ever [his] master" 1. That's one faithful Topthorn Topthorn is everything you would look for in a horse—or a sports car: a "shining black Albert's Father We only have to spend four chapters with Albert's drunk father, but that's more than enough to Captain Nicholls Morpurgo's Author's Note introduces us to Nicholls as though he's a historical figure who painted Emilie Sold to soldiers and captured by the opposing army, Joey finds himself at the mercy of the Gunther gives the pennant to Michael as a good-luck "charm" when he is assigned to the German front, but Gunther ignores an order to remain behind and await call to a later position.
Unable to persuade his brother to remain behind, he captures him from the column, on horseback, with Gunther riding Joey and Michael riding Topthorn. Their goal is to ride to Italy, but they stop for the night to hide in a farm's windmill and are discovered by German soldiers. Their status evident, they are executed by firing squad. The following morning, a young orphaned French girl named Emilie Celine Buckens , who lives at the farm with her grandfather Niels Arestrup , finds the two horses inside the windmill.
German soldiers arrive and confiscate all food and supplies from the property, but Emilie hides the horses in her bedroom to avoid them being taken by the Germans. Emilie suffers from a disease that makes her bones fragile and is not allowed to ride the horses for fear of falling. Nonetheless, Emilie's Grandfather allows her to ride Joey for her birthday, and she gallops the horse up the hill adjacent to the farm. This proves to be a dreadful mistake, and when Emilie does not come back immediately, Topthorn races off towards the hill, with the Grandfather following behind.
He sees that she has run into the German soldiers who ransacked their farm earlier. The German soldiers take the horses, despite Emilie's protests. The Grandfather keeps the pennant. Joey and Topthorn are put to pulling German heavy artillery, an exhausting task which kills horses quickly, either by gunfire or exhaustion.
They serve in this brutal task under care of the German Private Friedrich Nicolas Bro , who loves horses and tries to help them survive. After a British charge into no-man's land, Albert, Andrew, and other British soldiers miraculously make it across into a deserted German trench, where a gas bomb explodes, filling the trench with mustard gas.
Joey and Topthorn have survived years of hard service in the German army, much longer than most horses, but Topthorn finally succumbs to exhaustion and dies. Friedrich is dragged away by other German soldiers, leaving Joey to face an oncoming tank. The horse escapes and runs into no-man's land, where he gallops through the devastated Somme and gets entangled in the barbed wire barriers.
From their respective trenches, both British and German soldiers spot Joey in the night mist, and although disbelieving at first that a horse could have survived the battle, a British soldier from South Shields, named Colin Toby Kebbell , waves a white flag and crosses No Man's Land, trying to free the horse and coax him to the British side. They flip a coin to decide who should take possession of the horse; Colin wins and guides Joey to the British trench, now having formed a strange friendship with Pieter.
Andrew has been killed by the gas attack, but Albert has survived, temporarily blinded and with bandages covering his eyes. While recuperating at a British medical camp, he is told about the "miraculous horse" rescued from no-man's land.
The army doctor Liam Cunningham instructs Sgt. Fry Eddie Marsan to put Joey down, due to his injuries. But when Fry is about to shoot, Joey hears the owl call he learnt as a colt. Albert is led through the troops to Joey, again sounding his call, and Joey hurries to meet his long-lost friend.
Albert explains he raised Joey, and with bandages still covering his eyes, gives an exact description of the horse's markings, confirming his claim. Joey is covered in mud, so the veterinary surgeon at first dismisses Albert's statement, but he is astonished when soldiers wash away the grime, revealing the four white socks and diamond star on Joey's forehead.
The armistice that brings the end of the war coincides with Albert regaining his eyesight. When he learns that only officers' horses will be shipped home, he gathers funds from his fellow soldiers to purchase Joey at a scheduled highest-bidder auction, but finds himself losing a bidding war with a French butcher, reaching 30 pounds. Then a bid of pounds is entered. The bidder is an older gentleman, Emilie's grandfather, who informs the butcher that if he is bid against, he will sell his coat and bid to -- and should he be bid against again, he will sell his farm and bid to No other bid is placed, and the grandfather takes ownership of Joey, planning to return with him to his farm.
He tells Albert that Emilie has died, and after hearing about the miracle horse, he has walked three days to get Joey back, for the sake of his beloved granddaughter's memory. Albert pleads for the horse with Emilie's grandfather, who at first remains stoic.
The old man is surprised, however, when the horse chooses to return to Albert as if to say goodbye, and he subsequently presents Albert with the military pennant, asking him what it is.
Albert's quick recognition of the pennant convinces the grandfather that Joey is indeed his horse, and that returning Joey to his care is a better tribute to the memory of Emilie. Albert is seen returning with Joey to his family's farm, where he hugs his parents and returns the pennant to his father.
The elder Narracott extends his hand to the boy who has become a man. One had been with the Devon Yeomanry and was involved with horses; another veteran in his village, Captain Budgett, was with the cavalry and told Morpurgo how he had confided all his hopes and fears to his horse.
Both told him of the horrific conditions and loss of life, human, and animal, during the Great War. A third man remembered the army coming to the village to buy horses for the war effort: horses were used for cavalry and as draught animals, pulling guns, ambulances and other vehicles.
Morpurgo researched the subject further and learned that a million horses died on the British side; he extrapolated an overall figure of 10 million horse deaths on all sides. Of the million horses that were sent abroad from the UK, only 62, returned, the rest dying in the war or slaughtered in France for meat. After observing a young boy with a stammer forming a fond relationship with and talking fluently to a horse at a farm run by Morpurgo's charity Farms for City Children, Morpurgo found a way to tell the story through the horse and its relations with the various people it meets before and during the course of the war: a young Devon farmboy, a British cavalry officer, a German soldier, and an old Frenchman and his granddaughter.
Morpurgo tried to adapt the book into a film screenplay, working for over five years with Simon Channing-Williams, but in the end they had to admit defeat. The book was successfully adapted for a stage play by Nick Stafford in To work dramatically, the story could not be told solely through the viewpoint of the horse as it was in the book , and so the film version with a screenplay by Richard Curtis and Lee Hall is based on the narrative approach of the stage play more than that of the book.
Unlike the play, which used puppet horses, the film uses real horses and CGI. Lack of finances meant that it was an informal arrangement, with the film rights not formally sold by Morpurgo to Guest's production company and no-one being paid for the work they undertook. In , film producer Kathleen Kennedy saw the critically acclaimed production of War Horse in London's West End with her husband, fellow producer Frank Marshall and their two daughters.
They were very impressed by the story and Marshall has recalled how he was amazed that no-one had already bought the film rights to the book. Steven Spielberg was told about War Horse by several people, including Kennedy, who was his colleague at Amblin Entertainment. Its heart and its message provide a story that can be felt in every country.
He admitted to being moved to tears by the performance. Hall commented that "Weirdly the week that we finished it [the screenplay], Spielberg expressed an interest, we sent him the script, and within a couple of weeks he'd decided he was going to make the film—it was one of those situations that never happens in the world of film.
Curtis was initially reluctant to take part, but on meeting Spielberg they got on so well that Curtis rethought and committed to work on the script. Curtis has stated that the screenplay is closer to the book than the play, and that 'the existence of the play itself helped him "be brave" about his own adaptation. Having previously only been slated to produce the film, Spielberg decided to direct "the second I read [Curtis's] first draft.
It happened faster than anything else we've [Spielberg and Snider] done together. Speaking at the Tribeca Film Festival in April , actor Peter Mullan said that he took the part not just because Spielberg was directing, but also because of the 'beautiful script, really nice script'. According to an account of the book, play, and film's development by Michael Morpurgo, within weeks of hearing from Kennedy about the London theatre production, Spielberg had "seen the play, met the cast, visited the Imperial War Museum and decided this would be his next film.
In the weeks that followed he worked with Lee Hall and Richard Curtis on the script, and within months the film was being made". Spielberg was able to act so quickly because he was on a hiatus, waiting for the animation on his other release film, The Adventures of Tintin, to be completed. Kathleen Kennedy elaborated on the appeal of the story: "In cinema we've told very few stories about World War I and I think that's one of the things that attracted us to this It's a forgotten war in the United States, and that had a very powerful effect on Steven and I [sic].
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