It didn’t get a lot of attention during the early awards cycle or sell many tickets, but “Goodbye Christopher Robin” is an absolutely gorgeous film that explores some rather ugly subjects. On the surface it’s a look at the private life of “Winnie-the-Pooh” creator A.A. Milne. But on a deeper level, the movie serves as a portrait of a family whose dysfunction is widened by sudden fame.
Before World War I, Milne (Domhnall Gleeson) was a successful playwright of light comedies. But after being affected by the horrors of combat, he retreated to the countryside to write a treatise on the urgency for peace. He and his wife, Daphne (Marge Robbie), bring along their beloved tyke, Christopher Robin, known to them as Billy Moon (Will Tilston). It would see a perfect bucolic setting to bring them together.
Except… Milne finds he can’t write a word. Daphne tires of the sticks and decamps for the city life. And Billy Moon feels lost between them.
Eventually Milne and his son draw closer, and he crafts a series of stories involving him and a bunch of his stuffed animals, which the writer brings to life. Virtually overnight, Pooh becomes a sensation and Billy is turned into a celebrity, the representation of the perfect British lad. Tours, interviews, public appearances and the like becomes his new normal.
Kelly Macdonald plays Olive, the devoted nanny who largely takes care of Billy Moon while the parents are (often) physically or emotionally absent. She tries to warn them about what the effect of sudden fame could be to a little boy.
For his part, Milne finds himself resenting his own son. The people adored Pooh and Christopher Robin, but somehow the man who conjured them up and put them down on paper becomes almost a bystander.
Perhaps because it’s a challenging look at a family driven apart by money and fame, “Goodbye Christopher Robin” did not get all the consideration it deserved while it was (briefly) in theaters. Here’s hoping it gets a chance on home video.
Bonus features are decent enough, cemented by a feature-length audio commentary track by director Simon Curtis and screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce. There are also several promotional featurettes about the production and a gallery of photos from the set.
If you go into "Goodbye Christopher Robin" expecting, as I did, to see a heartwarming portrait of the creator of Winnie-the-Pooh and how his own family life helped him conjure that whimsical world, you may be a little shocked by the actual film you see. It's more challenging than expected, but ultimately much more rewarding, too.
Directed by Simon Curtis from a screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce and Simon Vaughan, "Goodbye" is a portrait of a remarkable family, but a dysfunctional one. It's a melancholy story of how parents can love their children but not always do the right thing by them, even as the outside world looks upon their circumstances as enviable -- even wondrous.
This is the tale of the darkness behind the magic.
Domhnall Gleeson plays author A.A. Milne, a decent man ravaged by the horrors of the World War I trenches. Known as Blue to family and friends, he's a typical upper-crust British husband and father, kindly but emotionally distant.
Once the family decamps London for a quiet farm in Sussex, everyone knows not to make loud noises, which trigger fits we now call PTSD, or disturb Blue while he's writing. Problem is, he's not writing. A successful playwright of light comedies before the war, he comes to find himself dissatisfied with this type of work. And he struggles to find a kind that does. Even his notion of a treatise on ending all wars lies fallow.
Margot Robbie plays his wife, Daphne, and this is neither the typical loving mother or shrewish harpy we're used to seeing in the movies. She enjoys the high life of London, but sacrifices her own joy for Blue's need for solitude. She loves their only son, Christopher Robin (Will Tilston) -- known to them as Billy Moon -- with all her heart, but happily shunts most of the day-to-day duties of mothering to the diligent nanny, Olive (Kelly Macdonald).
(Billy calls her Lou... clearly, this clan loves nicknames.)
Circumstances force Blue and Billy to be alone with each other for a long period of time. They take long walks in the gorgeous forest, play games, have adventures, and slowly draw closer as father and son. Building on the voices Daphne gave to Billy's favorite stuffed animals, Blue starts to create stories to go with them, centered on a kindly teddy bear who acts as a sort of little brother.
Blue enlists illustrator Ernest (E.H.) Shepard (Stephen Campbell Moore), a friend and fellow shell-shocked veteran, to come visit them and start doodling pictures to go along with the words. He includes Billy as a character in the stories, but gives him a false name, which is actually his real name, to draw some distance. For his own part, Billy Moon is a little trepidatious about being portrayed as Christopher Robin.
"If I'm in a book, people might think I'm not real," he says.
Winnie-the-Pooh becomes an international success virtually overnight, surprising everyone. There is joy and pride, but Blue also finds himself strangely resentful of his own son, who becomes an instant celebrity. People adore Christopher Robin as the ideal of childhood innocence, and can't distinguish him from the flesh-and-blood boy, Billy. Meanwhile, the writer stands in his own creation's shadow.
Before long Billy's quiet life in the country has turned into a litany of interviews, public appearances and being recognized wherever they go. Olive tries to warn Blue about the dangerous waters they're drifting into, but Daphne resents the intrusion of someone she sees as merely a servant.
Billy's childhood is happy, but growing up proves to be a much sterner proposition.
"Goodbye Christopher Robin" is a gorgeous film, with dappled sunlight streaming through trees, vivid colors and crisp details. (Ben Smithard was director of photography.) Decked out in beautiful tweed suits (by Odile Dicks-Mireaux) -- even while playing cricket -- Blue is the artist who relates better to his characters than the people they're based upon.
Gleeson is an interesting physical specimen, who can seem awkward and ungainly, or very handsome and masculine, depending on the performance and costumes/makeup. The Robbie character gets shunted to the side somewhat, but that's a reflection of a home life that was much more stilted than presented to the public.
Tilston, with his impossible dimples, is terrific as a little boy dealing with issues and emotions no one his age should have to. Alex Lawther takes over the role of Billy as he gets older, bringing new, less merry notes to the character.
Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher Robin are beloved creations that have stood the test of time for nearly a century. But they are just that: figments based on reality, not representing it.
Asa Butterfield shines in this earnest drama about a super-smart British kid whose math skills far outpace his social ones. Nathan is an autistic lad who gets a chance to join his country’s team on the international math Olympiad. It’s an opportunity of a lifetime, perhaps the entryway to the highest tiers of academia, but his shy manner and trouble relating with other teens also makes it a forbidding challenge.
First-time feature film director Morgan Matthews and screenwriter James Graham show their inexperience, layering in too many supporting characters and tertiary storylines. It’s not these background players are uninteresting – exactly the opposite, in fact.
For instance, Rafe Spall as Nathan’s mentor, a former Olympiad now battling multiple sclerosis, is so compelling that he steals too much of the spotlight from the main character. He almost needs his own movie. Then the filmmakers have the teacher start a romance with Mathan’s mum, played by the great Sally Hawkins, which just comes across as distracting and even creepy.
Still, the film finds its footing once Nathan and his team arrives in China, where they begin a friendly contest of wills with the home team. The boy tries to incorporate himself with his teammates but struggles, especially with the strong-willed Luke (Jake Davies). Meanwhile, Zhang Mei (Jo Yang) of the Chinese team offers her friendship … and perhaps something more, which Nathan is wholly unequipped to deal with.
“A Brilliant Young Mind” is a flawed but worthy cinematic effort. Too many movies nowadays give us lazy stories and unoriginal characters. Here’s a film that tries to do too much.
Alas, the film is being released on video without bonus features of any kind.
"A Brilliant Young Mind" is a sweet and sensitive tale, but it wants to be three sweet and sensitive tales -- maybe more. In exploring the world of an autistic teen boy who's also a math prodigy, the film gives into the temptation to have other figures in his life nudge him out of the frame, which diminishes him as a character.
It's still a lovely film about a troubled genius, along the lines of "A Beautiful Mind" or the more recent "Love & Mercy." I just wish the filmmakers were a little more disciplined in their storytelling choices.
Morgan Matthews is a veteran documentarian making his first foray into feature film directing, and screenwriter James Graham is a relative novice with credits in television. They make the sort of mistakes inexperienced movie-makers make, but show a deft touch toward building believable, relatable characters -- too many, in fact.
The movie's title everywhere but the U.S. is "x+y," which perhaps helps explain the movie's hazy focus. It's based on a documentary called "Beautiful Young Minds," about the International Mathematical Olympiad, also directed by Matthews.
Asa Butterfield plays Nathan Ellis, a Brit lad "on the spectrum" who has trouble connecting emotionally with others. He needs everything to be just so, from his food -- seven prawn balls, not nine! -- to his relationship with his mother (Sally Hawkins), whom he studiously keeps at a distance. His adoring father (Martin McCann) was killed years ago -- Edward Baker-Close plays Nathan as a child -- and he's been essentially floating above human contact since.
Rafe Spall plays Martin Humphreys, a former math prodigy himself, now stricken with MS and a crushing lack of self-worth, who takes Nathan under his wing and begins training him for the math Olympiad. Spall, who resembles a bearded Ryan Reynolds so much I actually thought it was him for the first half-hour or so, is tremendous in the role.
For awhile the film starts following him instead of Nathan, exploring his life away from the boy, and we grow confused. It's obvious Martin sees much of himself in Nathan, and has essentially devoted the entirety of his remaining ambition to seeing him succeed. Do we really need to follow Martin into group therapy sessions, where he lays out his doubts plain as paper? Or a burgeoning, ill-advised romance with Nathan's mom?
Similarly, once Nathan arrives in Taiwan for the math trials, the story sort of scatters into several pieces that, while engaging on their own, don't really fit together.
There is camaraderie and competition amongst the whiz kids, both within the British contingent and against the Chinese team and its adult captain, with whom Nathan's captain (the reliably nervy Eddie Marsan) has an enduring rivalry, barely concealed by convivial joshing.
One of the Brit boys, Luke (Jake Davies), seems to be the smartest and is certainly the boldest, but the others resent him, especially the more socially inclined Alex (Isaac Cooper). The power dynamic shifts this way and that, with Nathan as the neutral party. The team's lone female, Rebecca (Alexa Davies), clearly is attracted to him, but Nathan remains oblivious or unwilling to reciprocate.
Meanwhile, Zhang Mei (Jo Yang) is the Chinese team captain's niece, and makes repeated attempts to ingratiate herself with Nathan. He gradually responds and a friendship forms. Meanwhile, his work on the math team suffers. Has she been conscripted to disorient the British team's top competitor?
So is "A Brilliant Young Mind" a story about math? Or love? Academic rivalries? Second chances? Autism? Father figures? All it once, it would seem.
I may not be a math genius, but I know a thing or two about movies, and one of the first equations one needs to know is that too much addition to the story always results in a deduction of value from the final result. This film is still a positive cinematic experience, but could've been exponentially better.
