FILM
GOODBYE CHRISTOPHER ROBIN ?????????
(PG) General release (107 minutes)
It's 1928 and a little boy is wondering why his life has changed so much that he has to talk to the newspapers and have his picture taken wherever he goes. His Scottish nanny, Olive (Kelly Macdonald), tries to explain to eight-year-old Christopher Robin Milne (Will Tilston???) why so many people love the books created by his father, AA Milne (Domhnall Gleeson). Winnie-the-Pooh has already conquered the known world.
The war made everybody sad, Olive says, but Winnie and friends gave people hope again. That may have been true, though it would hardly explain the immediate and lasting popularity of the books in America, where the effects of the First World War were less acute - and it would be less than a firm basis for a movie. But wait, there's more.
The real Christopher Milne grew up to resent the legacy of Pooh and to blame his father for the loss of his own innocence. The real Christopher severed relations with his father and mother when he returned from the Second World War - although that largely happened before his enlistment in the movie. The real Christopher only spoke to his mother once in the 15 years between his father's death in 1956 and her demise. Only after his parents were gone did he allow himself to rediscover some of his affection for the books.
The movie ends before the resentment becomes overpowering, and with softer notes of reconciliation - a predictable reshaping of the truth for audience "satisfaction". That's the paradox of Goodbye Christopher Robin, a film that delves deeply into the emotions of its characters but lacks the courage to tell the story in a straight way.
In dramatic terms, the film is complex and involving; in historic terms, it's half-truth. That's better than nothing but never enough.
There is a gulf between script and direction here: the script is sober and smart, resisting the temptation to become a full-scale weepy melodrama bathed in nostalgic golden light. The direction, however, succumbs early on to that opportunity - perhaps trying to mimic the innocence of EH Shepard's original illustrations.
Shepard appears here simply as Ernest (Stephen Campbell Moore), one of Milne's colleagues from Punch but more importantly another war veteran who understands how his friend is suffering. Milne's wife Daphne (Margot Robbie) sees that too, but thinks that parties and the metropolitan life of a successful playwright will help him forget. Or at least will allow her the fun she wants while he stews in misery.
Daphne is a complex mixture of hot and cold emotion - not quite abandoning her child, but resenting the fact that he wasn't the girl she had hoped for.
Milne, meanwhile, is aloof; his flashbacks are triggered even by champagne corks. So he moves the family to a country house on the edge of Ashdown Forest in East Sussex - a place Daphne dislikes.
Still, she loves him and wants him to be able to work. If the trees and streams help that, so be it. Nanny Olive can take care of the boy while she commutes back and forth to London for parties.
There's not a lot of evidence that the real Milne suffered from what we would now term PTSD, but who knows? He served almost a year and a half in France, so it's quite plausible.
There is evidence that he never established a firm emotional connection to his young son, despite the warmth of the books. The movie has to construct that in a period when the nanny and Daphne are away. Father and son invent the game of pooh-sticks during this interlude, and the idea for the first book forms in the father's head.
In reality, Milne remained distant for the whole of his son's infancy - a fact that helps to explain the bitterness the son feels later as a young man, played by Alex Lawther.
What, then, is the film's worth? It's largely a victory of style over content - faithful to the truth only in so far as it serves a glowing, fit-for-export British film that Americans will love because of a cute kid and teddy bears.
The writers tried for more than that. Whatever truth the film holds is in the darkness between these parents and their offspring - but even that is not quite faithful enough.
