Christopher Robin (Marc Forster, 2018)

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knives
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm

Christopher Robin (Marc Forster, 2018)

#1 Post by knives » Thu Feb 07, 2019 6:51 pm

A close-up of Pooh's hand rustling a field as he ruminates on Pooh like thoughts is both the worst and most appropriate stealing of Malick's style yet. Like that shot Christopher Robin has so many things right with it that the touch of wrong becomes frustrating. Jim Cummings has perfected this role with an Aristotelian ability to cut through the seriousness of the minor things which overwhelm life. It's a beautiful performance arrested to a script that seems to know what it is doing. Alex Ross Perry and company don't insist on their styles, but their themes (his especially) pops on through with Albert Lamorisse being a thoroughline for example. There's a depth of theme all about the value of simplicity. A film in emotional retardation written just for money would have made this about inner children and other stupid platitudes. Instead the script asks for Robin to slow on down and appreciate. This is made more complex by using the experiences of being a veteran as a background illustrator for those skewed priorities. To sum up this amazing script and set of performances, of course an adult has special responsibilities, but are they primarily to work as an ends to itself or something else. What is the root and what is the branch?

It's a more delicate message that deserves a great film attached to it. Unfortunately we have Marc Forster instead. He douses this in a depressing style even as things lighten up so that it is occasionally hard to see. He also turns this into a cacophonous sound. The score should have been thrown out along with half the noise. I suppose I'm just becoming grumpy with old age, but between this and the Mister Rogers doc I really wish media would learn to appreciate silence and thought. Just think, think, think.

Also I'm all for diversity in casting, but having multi-coloured extras in a film set in 1950s London is terrible. First off it's historically illogical. Secondly, by keeping such people limited to the smallest of roles, altogether I suspect they speak four words, it smells of tokenism for the sake of without caring about people. It's lazy liberalism at its worst.

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mfunk9786
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Re: The Films of 2018

#2 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Feb 07, 2019 8:08 pm

knives wrote:
Thu Feb 07, 2019 6:51 pm
Also I'm all for diversity in casting, but having multi-coloured extras in a film set in 1950s London is terrible.
Counterpoint: there is also a talking bear in it

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knives
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm

Re: The Films of 2018

#3 Post by knives » Thu Feb 07, 2019 8:53 pm

Not a valid counterpoint because even magical realism deals with its fantasy in logical terms. If in a Marquez story there was suddenly a European looking person in ancient Columbia that would be noted. Also your post ignores the later portions of my paragraph.

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zedz
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Re: The Films of 2018

#4 Post by zedz » Thu Feb 07, 2019 10:13 pm

knives wrote:
Thu Feb 07, 2019 6:51 pm
Also I'm all for diversity in casting, but having multi-coloured extras in a film set in 1950s London is terrible. First off it's historically illogical. Secondly, by keeping such people limited to the smallest of roles, altogether I suspect they speak four words, it smells of tokenism for the sake of without caring about people. It's lazy liberalism at its worst.
I haven't seen the film and so don't know exactly what you're referring to, but the period of mass migration to Britain (and particularly London) from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Caribbean began soon after the end of WW2. (The Windrush arrived in 1948.) The 'Rivers of Blood' speech in 1968 wasn't directed at the prospect of mass migration from the colonies, so much as at a twenty-year history of it.

Of course, this doesn't mean that the film doesn't indulge in tokenism, but there were plenty of black and brown faces in London in the 1950s.

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knives
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Re: The Films of 2018

#5 Post by knives » Thu Feb 07, 2019 11:53 pm

To be more clear because you are correct what struck me as out of place tokenism was the placement of them. Christopher Robin works as an efficiencies officer at a valise manufacturer. Some mid-level management types, for sure none in working class jobs, are played by actors of African descent. Now, the U.K. could have been significantly in advance of the US on this, but it did stand out to me as unusual for the setting.

That doesn't reduce the sense of tokenism though as it is only the physiques that are prominent and not the characters.

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domino harvey
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Re: The Films of 2018

#6 Post by domino harvey » Fri Feb 08, 2019 12:22 am

It sounds a lot like what happened with the Founder, wherein suddenly the American south was happily integrated because a casting director meant well but didn't really think it through

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HJackson
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Re: Christopher Robin (Marc Forster, 2018)

#7 Post by HJackson » Fri Feb 08, 2019 2:48 am

The background casting didn't strike me badly in this one because, like zedz said, it's post-Windrush. Definitely optimistic in terms of their role in the labour market, sure, but it didn't take me out of the film. I certainly thought the tokenism in Darkest Hour was significantly worse, particularly since that scene seems to be a work of pure fiction that chafes so badly against Churchill's pretty awful views on black people.

Of course this whole thing opens a Pandora's box of questions about how we ought to represent the past on film. knives, I understand that your complaint is primarily that it's tokenism, but you also highlighted the fact that it's historically illogical. What are your thoughts on casting Adrian Lester as Elizabeth I's ambassador Lord Thomas Randolph in Mary Queen of Scots? He has a large role, that he carries off pretty well, but the elephant in the room is that Lord Thomas Randolph was not black and there are relevant factors at play in the era - namely colour prejudice - which explain why that person was not black. There's obviously a tension between wanting to create inclusive visions of the past for the purposes of social cohesion today and wanting to depict history as it was, warts and all.

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Aunt Peg
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Re: Christopher Robin (Marc Forster, 2018)

#8 Post by Aunt Peg » Fri Feb 08, 2019 3:17 am

HJackson wrote:
Fri Feb 08, 2019 2:48 am

Of course this whole thing opens a Pandora's box of questions about how we ought to represent the past on film. knives, I understand that your complaint is primarily that it's tokenism, but you also highlighted the fact that it's historically illogical. What are your thoughts on casting Adrian Lester as Elizabeth I's ambassador Lord Thomas Randolph in Mary Queen of Scots? He has a large role, that he carries off pretty well, but the elephant in the room is that Lord Thomas Randolph was not black and there are relevant factors at play in the era - namely colour prejudice - which explain why that person was not black. There's obviously a tension between wanting to create inclusive visions of the past for the purposes of social cohesion today and wanting to depict history as it was, warts and all.
I know the colour blind casting of Mary Queen of Scots has gotten the film a degree of publicity but I found the whole enterprise such a complete mess that its the least of the films problems. One of the things that got my eyes rolling to the back of my head was a gay male character so easily 'accepted' by Mary. Of course he is nothing more than a plot devise but what was offensive was his violent graphic prolonged death in the film. If Mel Gibson had directed the film Twitter and the like would be burning with rage but director Josie Rourke gets a free pass on this. And then there is Maggie Robbie's make-up. I suppose the filmmakers wanted a different look for QE1 as opposed to what we have been accustomed in other films but did she have to look like Stephen King's Pennywise.

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knives
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Re: Christopher Robin (Marc Forster, 2018)

#9 Post by knives » Fri Feb 08, 2019 8:02 am

I'd have to see Mary first to comment, but if the idea is well organized then I don't mind anachronisms. This seems more like Dom's example though. It also struck me as glaring since within the film it is isolated. The large crowds of London are all white so it is just these couple of people at his work which makes them stand out more.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Christopher Robin (Marc Forster, 2018)

#10 Post by mfunk9786 » Fri Feb 08, 2019 1:38 pm

To expand on my joke above, because I've now read through all of this and still hold a similar position: If you're making a film that's for a diverse range of families in 2018 that does not deeply concern itself with telling a historically accurate story (i.e. it is dealing with the emotional experience of a character in a fantastical, somewhat otherworldly context), why not cast it diversely if you think that actors can perform their parts well? I always loved Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory as a child because it was difficult to determine precisely where Charlie Bucket lived, where he fit in with the rest of the geographically defined children, and it created sort of a portal in for any number of kids to relate to Charlie despite filming a bunch of English speaking people in Munich without ever addressing with any specificity what the who/what/where/when/how is. I'd say that Forster in this case has plenty of artistic license to diversify a time that was not diverse, even if his logic is a shrug and a "just for the hell of it, why not." If Hamilton can exist and receive effusive, red-faced praise from almost everyone on the planet, why can't there be a black middle-manager in Christopher Robin?

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knives
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Re: Christopher Robin (Marc Forster, 2018)

#11 Post by knives » Fri Feb 08, 2019 3:31 pm

That was a thematic point in Hamilton. Seeing historical figures as races, and genders, other than they historically were was quite literally its reason for being. There's no similar theme going on here. Likewise the historical setting is a theme of this film with WWII and the nature of the '50s economic boom being essential to appreciating the story. It is not a film that could be anywhere and any when and thus the Willy Wonka example doesn't work. Even the Munich scenes function under a convention which doesn't translate, pardon the pun, to casting. These, presumably, aren't black actors playing white people. So the question remains what mechanism of the film makes this logical?

To get back to your question the film is about history so while it is not covering an historical event and contains the fantastic a logical adherence to setting is needed as part of the narrative. To ask a question to you if showing diversity is so okay to the film why not set it in the modern era? The film, to use your logic, is fantastical anyways so why not set it in any era since Robin's childhood could be any childhood and thus a modern one? Or why not have it take place in America like the Disney cartoons?

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mfunk9786
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Re: Christopher Robin (Marc Forster, 2018)

#12 Post by mfunk9786 » Sat Feb 09, 2019 3:11 am

I don't see anything wrong with your final two proposals, and I promise I'm not saying that to be contrarian. It would only irk me in something like the Milne biopic, that's trying to tell a story rooted in factual events, and I don't know what side of the line I would consider this film to be on. You've managed to make me borderline interested in seeing it!

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knives
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Re: Christopher Robin (Marc Forster, 2018)

#13 Post by knives » Sat Feb 09, 2019 8:07 pm

If I did at least that much then mission kind of accomplished. For whatever misgivings I may have about the film I do like it and frankly would rate over a lot of the 'serious' oscar contenders.

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Lemmy Caution
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Re: Christopher Robin (Marc Forster, 2018)

#14 Post by Lemmy Caution » Wed Mar 06, 2019 11:41 am

I thought this was rather mediocre. And a few times during my viewing I was on the verge of actively disliking it, but it kept pulling me back from the brink. Maybe the simplest formulation I can make is that all of the human scenes were boring or over-obvious in their intentions, and hard to sit through. Seemingly straight out of some late 1970's Disney TV program. While the animated doll sequences involving the Hundred Acre Woodsians were generally fairly good. The dialogue for the animal crew was generally good and fit the characters well.

However Pooh was rather inexpressive. And seemed rather depressed as though he'd been hanging out with Eeyore too much. I get that he is supposed to be wistful, and I guess discovering that Christopher Robin has become a boring suit doesn't liven things up much. But Pooh seems somewhat bummed most of the film, which dragged things down. Eeyore is the only other animal-character with much of a part, and his fatalistic and seriously depressed state of mind leads to some humor and definitely the best lines in the film. Some optimism from Pooh could have balanced things more, and possibly been a source of humor. Tigger gets a little screen time late, but doesn't add much. The others basically have little or no role, mostly just one group scene that tries but kind of drags.

Anyway, the ho-hum plot and the clunky human storyline really ruined the film for me. I came away with the feeling that the film put most of its time and money into the animation, and that's where it's interest was. The scenes involving human actors with the animated dolls were uneven. I'm still not sure why the animals can talk in the human world. I can accept that as just a general premise of the film, but it did seem a little odd and was never addressed. Overall, I think it could have used a lot more imagination and a better script. Disappointing.

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