Deep in the History of the Hundred Acre Wood
Here’s a fun fact for you, Winnie The Pooh was recently voted as the best children’s book of all time. What a miraculous feat for the book, when you think about how many kids books there are in the world and how many there are that are of both high quality and leave a mark of happiness on every child’s life. It’s a fact that shocked me a little because I hadn’t thought of how many people in the world had liked the book. What Goodbye Christopher Robin gets right is showing you not just the effect it had on people but the effect it had on the whole world.
Goodbye Christopher Robin follows the life of A.A. Milne, the author of Winnie the Pooh, and his son C.R. Milne, the inspiration for Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh, as Alan Milne comes back from World War One as a man whose head is filled with fear and visions of what he has been through. Alan is a writer but the world doesn’t want to hear about the sad times of the war, because it is over and they want to hear about happier times, so Alan looks to his son Christopher to create Winnie the Pooh. A book that changes the world and puts a smile on everyone’s faces.
The film isn’t exactly a shocking one, it isn’t something that will keep you on the edge of your seat, but one thing the film has going for itself is a small sense of wonder. Drawing inspiration from the ideas that create the book, the film takes the drawings from within the pages of the book and recreates them to show how particular characters were inspired to make Winnie the Pooh. This process of filmmaking is usually one that is mainly found in comic book movies these days as panels from the comics will find themselves displayed on the big screen for fans to see and recognize. If you are a fan of Winnie the Pooh, or if you were one when you were a child, you will notice particular drawings as shots in the film and it matches perfectly alongside the film’s emotional attributes which revolve around Alan’s PTSD and his son caring for him.
One area where the film is, unfortunately, let down on is it’s pacing, a common problem recently with films where they try to fit so much into one piece while thinking that everything is important. In Goodbye Christopher Robin the film jumps about crazily like Winnie the Pooh’s friend Tigger. There isn’t exactly an end to end story to be seen but more of a collection of scenes that somehow end up creating a storyline for the film. At one point you’ll be in the forest with Christopher and the next minute you’ll be at a gala event and it, unfortunately, takes some of the fun and emotion out of the film. There is some key, very sad, scenes that will almost make you cry but in the end, it cuts away too quickly for it to have a long-lasting effect on you.
Goodbye Christopher Robin is in no way a perfect film when it comes to filmmaking but when the film is discussing its central book and the inspiration behind it you see a glimmer of shining light that you can’t get enough of. The film can be confusing and a little hard to follow but for a Winnie the Pooh fan all you have to do is use your imagination a little and fill in the gaps. Winnie the Pooh was voted as the best children’s books of all time and Goodbye Christopher Robin does a great job at showing you why it was voted that.