Watching

[shewhomust]

Last night's TV was Goodbye Christopher Robin. I went into it with a vague sense that it had not been well reviewed, and so without great expectations: on that basis I was not disappointed, it was fine. In fact, Mark Kermode seems to have liked it, but I'm glad I didn't know that ahead of time. But then, my enjoyment of narrative based on a true story is always tempered by the itch to know exactly how much is true. Screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce paints a childhood of what amounts to parental neglect, and he names the book on which the film is based; Christopher Milne paints a gentler picture in his memoir The Enchanted Places - and while yes, he would, wouldn't he? I'm inclined to accept at least a degree of nuance from his account. My view of the film's truthfulness may be coloured by its opening, a scene in 1941 in which Christopher's parents receive a telegram from the front containing bad news. This is not untrue, but it invites a false perspective on the entire film.

We have also watched three of the six episodes of Staged in which David Tennant and Michael Sheen pay versions of themselves as actors cast in Six Characters in Search of an Author thwarted by lockdown and going through the motions of rehearsing from home (as recommended by Lucy Mangan). It's funny, and meta, and comes in handy bite-sized chunks. I am happy to be entertained by stuff that was produced before the pandemic: I read people who now flinch away from scenes of crowds, or dancing, or social embraces, but no, that doesn't bother me. That was then, this is now. What I am disproportionately grateful for is the recognition that we don't have to wait for the promised new dawn, the 'on the other side' to be creative, that we can still make entertainment, drama or comedy with what resources lockdown allows us. Hey kids, why don't we do the show right here in the barn?

Comments

[athenais]

I'm not at all bothered by seeing people in film or tv being near one another, hugging, whatever. It's like that's real life, what we do now is a phase. A long, long phase, for sure, but I can't have spent sixty years thinking that was normal and now find it odd.

[shewhomust]

I don't find it odd either, but I read people who say they flinch from it. On the other hand, I flinch from the confident assumption that thos will all pass, and we'll go back to how we were.

[sovay]

My view of the film's truthfulness may be coloured by its opening, a scene in 1941 in which Christopher's parents receive a telegram from the front containing bad news. This is not untrue, but it invites a false perspective on the entire film.

Is it true that Christopher Milne went missing in action and survived? Or is that invented?

[shewhomust]

Oh, that's a good question. I hope so - and Frank Cottrell Boyce implies that it is - but biographical information on the internet says very little about it. In The Enchanted Places Milne describes himself as an indifferent soldier, and mentions a head wound -

Oh, dear. Do you think it's an invention?