Charlie Mackesy’s Journey: The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse

Jet-lagged as you might expect for a British writer/illustrator just arriving from L.A., having promoted his film, and looking as you might imagine a mad scientist crossed with Gene Wilder, Charlie Mackesy held forth at a luncheon at the Whitby Hotel, signing cupcake boxes, posters, copies of his book, and telling a story about how his teaching drawing to a Holocaust survivor helped the man, now 100, unleash painful memories. His energy seemed remarkable, but the occasion, a celebration of the film adapted from his beloved book, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, was nominated for a Best Animated Short Film Oscar. Then you realize he’s fueled by the film, a fable with a fresh message. Starting with an encounter between a boy and a mole who is looking for cake in a snowy landscape—(well, isn’t everyone?)—the film addresses a fundamental question: the mole asks, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” The boy answers: “Kind.”

Okay. Simple enough. The mole voiced by Tom Hollander thinks he sees a cake, and even when he discovers it is a tree, there’s no disappointment, well, not really, because the tree is the most perfect tree, just as the boy, the mole, the fox, and the horse they encounter on their journey are drawn with a romantic perfection, becoming kind together, and yes, a family. The fox—gently voiced by Idris Elba—bares his teeth. He could just as easily have eaten the mole who saved him from a trap—but he doesn’t and saves him right back from drowning in fast-moving icy waters.

Producer Cara Speller was most surprised at one screening, when the mother of a 3-year-old asked on behalf of her child, why the cartooning changed when the horse jumps over the river. Astonished that this young person had noticed this detail, she said she had wanted Charlie’s drawings in the film, so in this small part, the horse moves, stops, moves, stops, and so on—a subtle progression of stills. She predicted the film’s boy—Jude Coward Nicoll—is an actor to note.

A major alteration from the book to the film was that the boy says he is lost, providing a plot to find home, although the major moments come from the lessons in fellowship learned en route. As to getting the A-list actors, Charlie Mackesy said, Gabriel Byrne was the hardest to cast and finally, he asked, “Will you be the horse?” Byrne said, “I am the horse.”

And then, after lunch, we all ate cake.