2.5 stars. Rated PG, for fleeting but graphic war images
By Derrick Bang
Brief portions of this
biographical drama are endearing: precisely what fans may have imagined, when
wondering how Winnie the Pooh was created.
Alas, the rest feels like
character assassination, akin to the hatchet job done on Walt Disney and P.L.
Travers, in 2013’s Saving Mr. Banks.
One must be wary of film
biographies that are “inspired” by actual events, since this often is code for
exaggeration and “made-up stuff.” Scripters Frank Cottrell Boyce and Simon
Vaughan have succumbed to this temptation, in one case rather egregiously
(apparently in service of “dramatic tension”).
Such embellishment can be excused
when little is known about the subject(s) in question, but Boyce and Vaughan
had much from which to draw: Alan Alexander Milne’s numerous essays, along with
Ann Thwaite’s sterling biography; and — most particularly — Christopher Robin
Milne’s own memoirs, The Enchanted Places,
The Path Through the Trees and Hollow on the Hill.
Director Simon Curtis’ film certainly
looks and feels authentic. Production designer David Roger has done a masterful
job of recreating the sparkle and sophistication of 1920s London, along with
the rustic, cozy and sun-dappled East Sussex countryside that A.A. Milne found
so comforting.
Curtis even used actual
locations, most crucially “Pooh Bridge” and Ashdown Forest, the wilderness
adjacent to Cotchford Farm, where Milne’s son — Christopher Robin, who went by
the nickname “Billy Moon” — spent his childhood. (The actual Cotchford Farm
still stands, but was unsuitable for filming; a similar property nearby was
used for exterior shooting.)
The problem is that this film’s
tone is relentlessly dreary, even mean-spirited. Milne’s wife Daphne is
portrayed as a cold-hearted, mercilessly self-centered monster: an
interpretation that Margot Robbie nails all too well. We hate her on sight, and
our opinion only lowers with time. Daphne lacks even a whiff of motherly
instinct, having apparently lost interest in her child when he turned out to be
a boy, rather than the girl she wanted.
Nor did she abandon that hope
gracefully, insisting that her son be garbed in smocks and dresses throughout
his childhood.
That detail is accurate enough,
and not unusual for the era. But there’s a world of difference between detached
and disengaged parenting — which was typical of the British upper class, at the
time — and this depiction of Daphne as a spiteful, sharp-tongued shrew who
cares only for consorting with her aristocratic friends. (And, if this film is
to be believed, who also cheated on her husband.)
At least Milne (Domhnall
Gleason), known to his friends and family as “Blue,” has a reason for his
withdrawn aloofness; he’s a shell-shocked survivor of WWI trench warfare, which
has left deep psychological scars (which, in a further indictment of this
version of Daphne, she brusquely dismisses and disregards).
Gleeson is just right as Milne:
equally credible as a mildly reluctant bon
vivant (at Daphne’s behest), a creatively blocked writer, and a war
survivor wary of anything that might prompt battlefield flashbacks. Gleeson delivers
the British reserve that regards the display of feelings as weakness; as a
result, we rejoice when Milne relaxes, smiles, and actually enjoys himself.
Gleeson also is persuasively
terrified, when Milne is overwhelmed by said flashbacks: a shift that frightens
those in his vicinity.
Following a brief prologue that
leaves us in suspenseful uncertainly, Curtis flashes back two decades and
begins the story with an economical and dazzling segue from Milne’s battlefield
horrors to his post-war return to civilized society, and his playwriting
career. But such pursuits now seem trivial, in the face of what England has
lost; he determines to eschew fancy in favor of writing a book “to end war for
all time.”
Daphne, meanwhile, gives birth to
their son, Christopher. Milne moves the family from bustling London to
Cotchford, where he hopes the peaceful surroundings will be more conducive to
writing.
The family unit is augmented by
Olive (Kelly Macdonald), the nanny hired to raise Christopher; he grows up
calling her Nou. She’s the hero of this piece: a perceptive woman who senses
that, perhaps more than most children, Christopher needs his parents’
attention. Olive does her best to compensate, and Macdonald’s warmth is this story’s
major saving grace; encouragement and whole-hearted love sound even more
endearing, when delivered via her Scottish accent.
Macdonald remains under-appreciated
on these shores: a terrific actress who debuted in 1996’s Trainspotting, and then made definitive marks in the TV miniseries State of Play, and films such as Gosford Park, Finding Neverland and The
Girl in the Café.
The film’s true treasure,
however, is first-time actor Will Tilston: absolutely adorable as 8-year-old
Christopher Robin. I cannot imagine a more perfect young actor for the role;
he’s every inch the personification of the imaginative and endearingly innocent
little boy. Tilston also projects kindness and sensitivity; he’s the only
person acutely attuned to his father’s “spells.”
Enduring this boy’s frequently
crestfallen expression, at numerous disappointments, is heartbreaking: distress
relieved only by Tilston’s radiant smile and enthusiastic eyes, when Christopher
is happy about something. His speech
is child-natural, just like a precocious kid who chooses his words carefully,
as if wanting to make a precisely proper point.
The story’s warmest segment comes
midway, when father and son are left to fend for themselves for a few weeks:
the magical fortnight where Milne (finally!) allows himself to see and know Christopher, and the moment when
the boy’s imaginative adventures with his ubiquitous stuffed teddy bear spark a
fresh literary note. The immediate result is the poem “Vespers,” first
published in Vanity Fair in January
1923, and which becomes an immediate sensation.
Convinced that he’s onto
something with more commercial potential than a stuffy pacifist screed, Milne
summons his friend Ernest (Stephen Campbell Moore), a skilled illustrator. The
two men follow Christopher into nearby Ashdown Forest, Ernest rapidly sketching
and Milne taking notes, as the boy makes up activities with his bear and
numerous other stuffed animals.
Moore’s cheerfully sensitive
handling of Ernest — better known today as E.H. Shepard — is another welcome
note of compassion in a narrative too frequently dominated by gloom. (It should
be noted, however, that this film’s scripters have greatly embellished the pre-Pooh
relationship between these two men.)
The resulting book of children’s
verse, When We Were Very Young, is a
smash success when published in 1924. Suddenly, young Christopher’s live is no
longer his own ... because (with apologies to Pinocchio) he is a real boy, and Milne unwisely didn’t
change his son’s name for published.
This is the crux of Curtis’ film,
and yes: a terrific dramatic hook on which to hang the evolution of a
fascinating character dynamic. (As the adult Christopher later wrote, in one of
his memoirs, “It seemed to me almost that my father had got to where he was, by
climbing upon my infant shoulders, [and] that he had filched from me my good
name, and had left me with the empty fame of being his son.”)
Unfortunately, the crushing impact
of Robbie’s tone-deaf Daphne overpowers the delicacy of young Christopher’s
gradual realization that his personal childhood — and his bear — have become public property. The imbalance is so bad
that, when the timeline returns to the events briefly depicted in the prologue,
and then moves on, there’s no way to accept Daphne’s behavior: She simply has
no right to the emotions Robbie is required to display. The scene is wholly
false.
This third act also is abrupt and
rushed, Christopher’s transition from 8 to 18 (now played, far less
convincingly, by Alex Lawther) feeling more like afterthought than narrative
necessity. Granted, these later events are essential to the story, but surely
Boyce and Vaughan could have handled them better.
Their script also is oddly vague
with respect to the actual number of books in which Milne “filched” his son’s
childhood. For the record, in addition to the aforementioned When We Were Very Young: Winnie-the-Pooh (1926), Now We Are Six (1927) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928).
Frankly, fans are far better off
re-reading one or more of those soothing classics, in order to preserve fond
memories of Christopher Robin, and the (obviously) gentle man who so
perceptively put childhood innocence on the printed page. At best, Goodbye Christopher Robin will tarnish
such impressions; at worst, it’ll destroy them utterly.
And who needs that?
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