Goodbye Christopher Robin 2017

Right from the opening scenes the director makes it obvious this is more than just a story of how the characters of Winnie the Pooh were created. It is not a feel-good story. It seemed to me to be how much of a hole a great and terrible war can leave inside a person. Domhall Gleeson plays AA Milne with the such unsmiling, frowning, sombreness that you can’t help feeling the war had absolutely nothing to do with his lack of emotion or response to anything other than being ‘proper’ and ‘correct’. We are only lead to the conclusion that is was the war by a brief battle-scene and the flinching and ticks he displays at noises. I started off feeling sorry for him due to this setup but less than halfway through I started to think he was just an unloving, stiff-upper-lip git. I’m not sure Gleason or the director wanted this.

Disappointingly the makers decided that the ‘baddie’, (every film has to have one), would be Christopher Robin’s mother. A harpy interested only in having the right type of husband and family, who had a child to please her husband and treats ‘lesser’ people like slightly intelligent stock. Was she really this way? Even some of the worst types of these people, believe me, they still exist, are not as two dimensional and cartoonish. Margot Robbie does well as she can with the role but her odd cut-glass accent definitely slips back to Australia a few times during the run.

No doubt Gleason and Robbie are fine actors but in truth, they were blasted off the picture by the amazing acting of ‘small’ child actor Will Tilston who just seems to be natural and unaffected by the whole process. Right from the get-go, I believed he was a small boy going through these circumstances, amazing. He is ably backed up by the ever-reliable Kelly MacDonald whose character is clearly the surrogate audience and voice of conscience. As usual, she does well with a character who most film-goers would start to lose patience with and begin to yell ‘Tell them to stick it…’

The settings are pastoral green and do a good job of sending us back to the oft-imagined and over-exaggerated green and pleasant land that so many seem to dream of and believe in nowadays. Whether it was as idyllic as this is a moot point but certainly the real Christopher Robin remembered it with real love and affection so a portrayal of the scenery in this way suits the narrative.

The film builds us up to a difficult and spiky relationship between the main four characters and then pulls all this back to end with the sentimental tear-jerking that people expect from a Winnie-the-Pooh based tale.

All in the all the film as a story on its own is good and the acting, with a few wobbles, is top class. Unfortunately, once again, it is a ‘true story’ where the actual truth and the story are only nodding acquaintances. Christopher Robin loved being Christopher Robin until he went to school and really started to dislike the fame when he was in his twenties and so each layer has a grain of truth to it but seems to have been altered, shortened or moved for the benefit of running time or my personal bug-bear to give the audience ‘a focus’ etc.

Goodbye Christopher Robin is a film I enjoyed watching and I’m glad I watched it. I doubt I’ll watch it again and it did make me research the truth but I do get frustrated with mangling of history when the true stories are as interesting as what is finally put out into the cinema. I’ll never understand it no matter how much film-makers try to justify it.

Without a doubt one of the best films released in my lifetime. I absolutely love A.A. Milne and I believe that if every adult continues to read the Winnie-the-Pooh stories, the world would be a better place. Like millions of other people, these stories were part of my childhood, and as I grew up, I began to research more about the man who created them. I found the life of Alan Milne just as fascinating as the books. His background definitely played a part in how deep these children's stories are. While they may be deep, they're never dark, which is an astonishing achievement from an author who suffered with post traumatic stress.

Every part of this film works wonderfully. The acting is superb by every member of the cast, the camera work and lighting is second to none. The editing is phenomenal. The music helps create the nostalgic atmosphere of the whole film. But the storytelling is what makes it work so well.

It really is an emotional journey through the past, especially for anyone who cares so much about the people who are portrayed in the film. There's references from the original stories throughout the film (which shows what inspired him to put these ideas in.) But I think even for those who are not as familiar with the books, it is still a magnificent film. It will certainly give any viewer a better appreciation of the Milne family and the wonderful world of Winnie-the-Pooh.