Goodbye Christopher Robin (Will Tilston)

(Amazon UK link)

I’m not quite sure why Amazon recommended the film ‘Goodbye Christopher Robin’ to me, but I’m very glad they did. I put it on my wishlist about six months ago, and was given it last Christmas. We watched it last night, and were totally mesmerised. It’s one of the best films we’ve seen for a long time.

It’s based on the true story of AA Milne, author of the two books about Winnie-the-Pooh and two books of children’s poems. We knew very little about the author before watching this. It’s entirely possible that there were inaccuracies or artistic license taken. But the extras at the end, and a little research done today suggest that, in essence, the film is very true to life.

Young Will Tilston is the star of this film, as the young Christopher Robin. It was his first role in a film, yet he is entirely believable. But the story starts shortly before he was born (after an initial sequence showing his parents, rather older, receiving a telegram). Alan (Domhnall Gleeson) and Daphne (Margot Robbie) are the parents concerned, known to all as Blue and Daff. Alan has just returned from World War I, without physical injury but with quite serious post-traumatic stress. This gives him flashbacks and terrors that his wife finds difficult to deal with.

Daphne is delighted to find that she is pregnant, but the birth is traumatic. She doesn’t know what to expect, and she is devastated to give birth to a boy. She’s terrified that he will go off to war one day, and refuses, at first, to bond with him. Alan isn’t at all sure what to make of the baby either. His handling is amusingly awkward. And when the baby is six weeks old, the parents go to Italy for a holiday without him, leaving him in the care of his new nanny, Olive (Kelly Macdonald). It seems shocking to us in the 21st century, but was evidently not unusual for a hundred years ago.

Christopher Robin is known as Billy Moon to his family and nurse. He has quite a happy childhood, cared for very well by Olive. He is given many gifts by his parents, including large numbers of stuffed animals who are the inspiration for Winnie-the-Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore and the rest. Daphne likes to play with her son sometimes, and is very good at animal voices. But she’s a socialite and quite selfish, and much more interested in having fun. Alan is a writer who has felt blocked since the war. This causes a great deal of tension between him and Daphne, particularly after they move out of London to the countryside.

Circumstances force Alan to take more notice of his son and the two of them start to bond in some quite moving scenes. Christopher Robin asks his father to write a book for him, and is thrilled - at first - when the book takes shape, illustrated by his father’s close friend Ernest (Stephen Campbell Moore). The film becomes lighter as they play ‘Pooh-sticks’ on a bridge, climb trees and play games in the woods.

The first book, when published, is far more successful than anyone could have imagined. It caught the imagination of the UK public, and eventually the rest of the world. It’s explained as a kind of childhood innocence, something that people are longing for after the horrors of the war, and the resultant depression and widespread starvation.

Then the press get involved, wanting photos and interviews. Olive tries to protect her charge, but Daphne is keen on publicity. As becomes gradually clearer, her son is something of a pawn, drawn into more and more public appearances. As this happens, he feels less and less as if his parents really care for him.

His teenage years are shown only briefly, with some horrendous bullying. Fame has done him no good at all with his peers, and he emerges from school a bitter, angry young man (played extremely well by Alex Lawther). He then signs up for the army, at the start of the second world war, and we don’t know what the outcome will be until almost the end.

It could have been a depressing story. But it’s extremely well made, with acting so realistic that we were drawn right into the film. Our emotions were tugged, feeling for Christopher Robin who really only wants to be loved. He comes across as a thoroughly nice, caring child who is willing to do almost anything if it will make his parents care.

As well as being an excellent film, it was eye-opening as far as the real AA Milne and Christopher Robin were concerned. I had not really thought of them as three-dimensional people before, nor what fame of this kind might have done to an impressionable, cute and young-looking child. Indeed, I hope that the young actor will not suffer in a similar way for his instant stardom.

‘Goodbye Christopher Robin’ is rated PG, which is fair, but not necessarily helpful. There’s nothing ‘adult’, nor any nudity, and only the very mildest of bad language. But there are some quite gruesome war shots, and some other scenes or moments that could be disturbing to a young child. I wouldn’t really recommend it to anyone below the age of about twelve.

However, the scenery is gorgeous, the settings realistic and the pace exactly right to hold our interest without racing through the story. All in all, we thought it a wonderful film. There are ‘extras’ with brief cameos of some of the main actors and a bit more background, which we enjoyed watching afterwards.

Highly recommended to adults and teenagers, though it may change the way you think about AA Milne's children's books in future.

Review copyright 2020 Sue's DVD Reviews

The Florida Project (Brooklynn Prince)

(Amazon UK link)

My husband thought the film ‘The Florida Project’ looked interesting, so put the blu-ray on his wishlist last year. He usually asks for thrillers or fast action films that he watches on his own. But he sometimes adds a couple that he thinks I will like too, and this was one of them. He was given it for Christmas last year, and we decided to watch it last night.

The film opens with some small children - with the slightly unusual names of Moonee (Brooklynn Prince), Scooty (Christopher River) and Dicky (Aiden Malik) - running wild. We see them behaving very badly to some new residents of the area. Moonee, we soon learn, lives in a run-down motel with her mother Halley (Bria Vinaite), who is a stripper. I found it hard to understand Halley’s accent, but the gist is clear. She loves her daughter, and occasionally they have fun together. But most of the time she neglects her in favour of smoking weed.

The children get in trouble with the new resident, but then Moonee makes friends with her daughter Jancey (Valeria Cotto). Halley has trouble paying her rent and tries various methods of earning money, none of them legal, and some of them shocking. The children are mostly full of mischief (at best), downright obnoxious at worst.

And there’s a hard-working, honest but often frustrated manager of the motel complex, called Bobby (Willem Dafoe). He tries to help people where he can, and be flexible when possible; but he has to do his job. And it’s a very difficult one at times. Bobby stands out as a person of integrity who genuinely cares about the folk he comes across, particularly the children.

There really isn’t much story. About half an hour into the film, we were both wondering where it was going. People were interacting, and day-to-day life was progressing, but there didn’t appear to be any plot. The locations were depressing, and none of the characters were at all likeable, other than, perhaps, Bobby.

However, we kept watching. The film flows well; the children are excellent and believable as actors, though it seemed surprising that Moonee is so bright, given the state of her mother. But their behaviour is terrible - they steal and beg, and cheat… and nobody seems to care.

The front of the blu-ray box claims that this film is ‘pure cinematic joy’, and that every moment is ‘glorious’. I think the reviewers must have seen a different film. There was no joy in it at all. On the contrary, it’s very depressing to think that people might live this way, and that children could grow up with so few morals. We didn’t see any glorious moments, either. Good acting, yes. A good pace, certainly. A few cute one-liners, mostly involving Moonee. But nothing remotely joyful or glorious.

There’s no actual nudity or explicit scenes, but a great deal is said or implied, including a couple of very unpleasant visitors to the complex. And there’s a lot more ‘strong’ language than I am comfortable with. The rating is 15, which I suppose is fair, but I can’t imagine most teenagers being at all interested in this.

As for the ending, it’s abrupt and so open-ended that we couldn’t believe, for a moment, that it had actually finished.

We wondered if the ‘extras’ would help us understand a bit better, but the ‘making of’ film was disjointed and uninteresting. We started watching the ‘interviews’ with cast, which started with lots of commentary from the actress who played Halley. It was interesting to learn that she had never acted before this film, and did a crash course in acting beforehand. But there was no interviewer, and after five minutes of monologue, we gave up.

On the plus side, the film has given us an insight into an American State we knew almost nothing about, and a look at a lifestyle that’s entirely foreign to us. We’ll probably remember images from it for a while. But I can’t imagine wanting to see it again.

Review copyright 2020 Sue's DVD Reviews