DVD review: Goodbye Christopher Robin
The story of a little boy who shared his toys with the world.
Reviewed by: Samantha Keogh
Review made possible by: Empire Entertainment
Goodbye Christopher Robin looks at the life of author AA Milne and how the writing of the Winnie the Pooh stories, inspired by his son and his stuffed animals, changed both Milne and his son CR Milne’s lives.
Returning from World War One, Milne suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and is unable to find meaning in his pre-war writing style, mostly comedies (stage plays) about the frivolities of life.
Moving to the country for silence and perspective, Milne continues to struggle with his writing until he spends time playing with his son Billy Moon, as he is known to his parents and nanny, in the woods behind their home. Milne begins his foray into children’s literature with a series of poems, about his son and his adventure in the woods, which develop into stories which quickly became popular across the globe.
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When asked by Billy what he will be called in the book, Milne answers: “Christopher Robin because it is your real name but it’s not who you really are”.
So starts the tales which have made thousands of children happy for over 60 years, but had dire consequences for Billy who had to give up his privacy and share his friends.
Written to show the perspectives of both Billy and his father, known as Blue, it is a wonderful tale of how the happiness of the world’s children caused the unhappiness of the child for whom the stories were written.
It also looks at Milne’s identity crisis when people are more interested in doing interviews and photos with the “real” Christopher Robin then they are of speaking to him.
He grows to resent being overshadowed by his young son and later, whether for his son’s sake or his own, stopped writing about Winnie the Pooh and his friends.
It also looks at the resentment which grows within Billy towards his father but glosses over the bullying the real CR Milne endured throughout his schooling due to his fame as a character in the books.
As Billy gets ready to deploy to the front in World War II he tells his father, possibly for the first time, how he really felt about the books to which Blue replies: “you asked me to write you a story.” With the words “for me, not about me,”
Billy goes off to leaving Blue, and the viewer, under no illusions about how Billy felt about his father.
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This is a great family movie which I thoroughly enjoyed but glamorises the life of the boy and his bear leaving the viewer with a far rosier picture of Billy’s life than is factually true.
However, that said it is well worth a watch.
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