Goodbye Christopher Robin (2017)
A behind-the-scenes look at the life of author A.A. Milne and the creation of the Winnie the Pooh stories inspired by his son C.R. Milne.
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A rare glimpse into the relationship between beloved children's author
A. A. Milne (Domhnall Gleeson) and his son Christopher Robin, whose toys
inspired the magical world of Winnie the Pooh. Along with his mother
Daphne (Margot Robbie), and his nanny Olive, Christopher Robin and his
family are swept up in the international success of the books; the
enchanting tales bringing hope and comfort to England after the First
World War. But with the eyes of the world on Christopher Robin, what
will the cost be to the family?
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UKLanguage:
EnglishRelease Date:
29 September 2017 (UK) See more »Also Known As:
Addio Christopher Robin See more »Company Credits
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Domhnall Gleeson and Kelly Macdonald's third film together. They previously appeared in Anna Karenina (2012) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011).
Starring alongside Margot Robbie and Kelly Macdonald, Domhnall Gleeson plays Winnie-the-Pooh creator A.A. Milne in a drama that focuses on the British author’s relationship with his son.
For C. R. Milne, the real-life boy behind a beloved
kids' book character, the popularity of his father's stories was a
curse. Screenwriters Frank Cottrell-Boyce and Simon Vaughan draw upon
his memoirs for Goodbye Christopher Robin, and though director
Simon Curtis applies a heavy hand, he mostly avoids preciousness in the
child's-eye perspective, if not the reverse-engineered quality that
infects many biopics. It's the chemistry between Domhnall Gleeson and
newcomer Will Tilston, as the awkwardly matched father and son, that
makes the movie more than a melange of inept parenting and Tigger, too.
It's also a story of the trauma of combat. Domhnall's
celebrated playwright A. A. Milne is a shell-shocked veteran of World
War I's trenches. Back in London society, his fervent antiwar
pronouncements make him a buzzkill at soirees. When a popped champagne
cork or opening-night spotlight triggers flashbacks, he does his best to
maintain a stiff upper lip. But the illustrator E. H. Shepard (well
played by Stephen Campbell Moore), a fellow vet and Punch
contributor who would become Milne's collaborator on the Winnie-the-Pooh
books, notices his friend's jangled nerves and quietly does what he can
to calm him.
Not so Milne's wife, Daphne (Margot Robbie), who insists
that "if you don't think about dreadful things, they cease to exist."
As the movie's villain of sorts, the excellent Robbie is cheerfully
tactless, a party girl who's married as much to Milne's ambition and
stature as she is to the man. Her stylish dresses, designed by Odile
Dicks-Mireaux, reflect not just the creme de la creme of 1920s chic but
Daphne's need to be part of it. Although bored by her husband's
determination to take a break from West End comedies and do something
serious, she nonetheless agrees to move to the country with him and
their son (Tilston), officially named Christopher Robin but known by his
nickname, Billy Moon. Daphne sticks it out in England's southeast until
she can no longer abide Milne's lack of productivity or resist the
siren call of the capital.
By then the boy's nanny, Olive, aka Nou and played with
welcome grit and warmth by Kelly Macdonald, has already established
herself as the only grounded, emotionally equipped adult in his life.
(Her primacy is underscored in the way her Scottish vowels can be heard
in Alex Lawther's portrayal of the young adult Billy.)
When the flummoxed Milne is left on his own with Billy,
the heart of the film unwinds over a quarter-hour of bonding that’s both
charged and charmed; the first breakfast between father and son unfolds
as a priceless bit of negotiation. They become storytelling partners
and, with help from the artist Shepard, build an imagined world around
the boy’s teddy bear and his other stuffed animals — namely, Piglet,
Eeyore, Tigger, Kango and Roo. Working in some of the actual East Sussex
locations where the Milnes found inspiration, Curtis and
cinematographer Ben Smithard punctuate the story with such effective
touches of magic realism as an imaginary snowfall and storybook beams of
light through the trees of Ashdown Forest.
But it's their attention to the ways that the dimply
Billy is as watchful and wary as he is hungry for paternal affection
that makes the father-son exchanges compelling. Though he's not immune
to outbursts of childish jealousy when Nou finds a suitor (Shaun
Dingwall), Billy is an old soul with a knack for empathy, skillfully
talking his war-damaged father out of his occasional panic attacks.
Despite distracting aging makeup and overemphatic directing choices, Ex Machina star
Gleeson convincingly embodies someone who can express himself on the
page but is not always at home in his skin. From his self-reproachful
clumsiness at a formal dance — and a rare redemptive moment for Daphne —
to the trepidatious way he carries his infant son, Gleeson's Milne
finally becomes a kind of director, guiding Shepard in visual cues for
their joint venture as they turn backyard stories into a publishing
sensation.
How something so intimate became something that belonged
to the world, and how Billy became called upon to play a role he
despised — "the real Christopher Robin" — is the subject of the movie's
pointedly oversimplified second half. Macdonald's fierce and wise nanny
does what she can to protect Billy from prying reporters, but soon he's a
celebrity with a full appointment schedule. And while the fan letters
by the bushel thrill the perhaps scapegoated Daphne, the film treats
Milne as an ambivalent, borderline-clueless participant in this new
level of fame, a man who comes to feel almost as entrapped by the
success of his children's books as does his son.
In a striking convergence with mother!, a movie that features Gleeson but which could not otherwise be more different from Curtis' family-friendly outing, Goodbye Christopher Robin gazes in horror at artistic achievement as a bedeviling plague of
hungry, albeit enriching, fans. Turning the utterly accessible,
mainstream-oriented books into a thriving enterprise, those fans clamor
insensitively and say all the wrong things, gauche monsters that they
are.
Curtis, whose feature credits include the lamentable Woman in Gold and the considerably more involving My Week With Marilyn,
tends to bring the story's every undercurrent to the surface. So does
the screenplay, beginning with the movie's opening salvo, which
needlessly resorts to the default tactic of starting at a crucial point
late in the story and then flashing backward to tell the tale. But
whether the onscreen action is obvious or subtle, Carter Burwell's
elegant score is understatement personified.
It complements the point of view that defines the film — that of Billy Moon. Like many astute kids, he sees his parents' vulnerabilities and understands more than he can articulate. It takes years of suffering before Lawther's older, deeply disgruntled version of the character gets to unburden himself. His vehemence is jarring but understandable; where the movie truly stumbles is in its cozily cathartic wrap-up, sorting out unresolved guilt and blame in such picture-perfect fashion that Christopher Robin Milne and his famous father would likely cringe.
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