Goodbye Christopher Robin

[osprey_archer]

The title of Goodbye Christopher Robin probably should have tipped me off that the movie was going to be sad, as in fact should my own previous knowledge of the book’s creation: I knew going in that Christopher Robin Milne came to hate the books and tried to hide his connection to them, because he had been bullied about them in school.

I don’t know if the movie is accurate in portraying Milne as packing his child off to boarding school to get him away from the pressure of a media insatiable for Pooh publicity - given what a prominent (if ominously vague) role going away to school plays in the books, I rather expect that boarding school was always in the cards - but it definitely comes across as an “out of the frying pan, into the fire” solution.

And given what I know of 1) English public schools and 2) human nature, the bullying seems practically inevitable: A. A. Milne painted a target on his son’s back when he made him the main character of a set of adorably twee books suitable for very small children. Slightly older children often hate things for small children. In my day, we scoffed at Barney. It seems catastrophically short-sighted of A. A. Milne not to realize this and take evasive action by, oh, changing the character’s name before he sent the book to press.

I would have liked the film more if it hadn’t seemed quite so intent on exculpating A. A. Milne - I think I would have blamed him less, ironically, if the film had blamed him more. True, Christopher Robin gets a scene where he tells his father that Winnie the Pooh ruined his life (right before he ships out to World War II, to boot) - but then he comes back and he’s much more conciliatory. He went through years of hell because of that miserable bear, but look at all the happiness Pooh brought to so many other people! You done good, Dad.

Now I realize that the filmmakers probably couldn’t afford to alienate their probable core audience of Pooh fans by condemning Winnie the Pooh, but there is a moral question here - is the joy that Winnie the Pooh brings to fans tainted somehow by the fact that it wrecked Christopher Robin’s life for a while? - and the answer they give is too pat. The film would have benefitted enormously if it spent more time on the aftermath.

Comments

[sartorias]

In case you want a perspective on the film's veracity:

https://calimac.dreamwidth.org/776854.html

[osprey_archer]

They really fell between two stools on this whole historical accuracy thing. On the one hand, they didn't care about it enough to tell a story that particularly resembles reality; but they also weren't willing to totally fling it to the winds and tell the story they really seem to have been gunning for, which is about a writer traumatized by war who yearns to help prevent another war, and writes a story where his son will remain forever young and safe - only for the son to grow up and die another global conflagration like the one that traumatized the writer in the first place.

Unfortunately for the filmmakers, Christopher Robin lived through World War II, which really throws a spanner into their tragedy.

[sartorias]

Yep. The person I mentioned with the link had a long post about Milne and war attitudes as well.

[ladyherenya]

Winnie the Pooh played a prominent role in my childhood and remains oft-quoted in my family, and this film sounds so unappealing to me.


I do find it interesting that Milne and J.M. Barrie were part of the same cricket team and that both named characters after real children who grew into men who had issues with this legacy.

[osprey_archer]

I feel that if someone wants to make a film about the brutal origins of a beloved childhood novel, they ought to at least have their facts right, you know? Evidently the film makes the origins of Winnie the Pooh look far darker than they were - witness for instance the scene where poor frightened Christopher Robin is forced to go into a zoo bear's cage for a photo shoot, when in real life he happily played with that very bear. And not for photo shoots, either; A. A. Milne had some connection to the zoo so the keeper would just let Christopher Robin into the cage to play with the bear.

Now, by 21st century standards letting one's child play with a real live bear, even a tame one in a zoo, is probably not A++ parenting, but it's still a thousand times better than forcing the poor child to do a terrifying photo shoot while he tries not to cry. I think the filmmakers had a vision of the story they wanted to tell and tried to push the origins of Winnie the Pooh into it even though it doesn't really fit.

This cricket team containing Milne and J. M. Barrie sounds like a much more promising subject for a movie, honestly. Or a miniseries. I would watch that.