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Domhnall Gleeson

Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway – Tell Me Who I Am

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Growing up can be difficult enough without people telling you who they think you are.

Written and directed by Will Gluck (Easy A), Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway is an enjoyable romp through the English countryside and city that never loses its heart. Balancing the outlandishly silly and simple charm, Gluck has created a sequel worthy of the original film that should entertain both children and their parents alike. Adding to the film’s effectiveness are the voice cast who are so star-studded that one will likely be shocked by some of the names attached during the end credits. (Admittedly though, other than Corden himself, one would have a difficult time identifying the other actors throughout the film strictly by their performances.)

Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway takes us back to McGregor’s garden for the wedding of Bea and Thomas (Rose Byrne and Dohmnall Gleeson). Though they have no kids of their own, Bea and Thomas have developed a makeshift family with the rabbits and other animals and all seems well in their abode. Even so, despite the fact that he wants to be a good rabbit, Peter (James Corden) can’t seem to break free from his reputation of causing trouble. Then, when Bea gets a call from a publishing company about her book, the family hops into the truck and travels to the city. Suddenly out of the garden, Peter finds himself in a world where being a rascal is celebrated. After he meets Barnabas (Lenny James), an old friend of his father, Peter is invited into the criminal underworld (well, for bunnies that is) and must decide what type of rabbit he wants to be.

In some ways, The Runaway is an odd take on the franchise. On the one hand, it doesn’t always feel like the books that were read to me as a child. With my young ears, those simple tales about animals learning lessons about growing up at the farm felt almost thought-provoking with their innocence. However, the film adaptation feels like a different animal entirely. Like the first film, Runaway is filled with energy and life with an eye on pop culture and modern sensibilities. On the surface, that style of vigorous storytelling style feels like it should be incongruous with the original. 

However, on the other hand, somehow Gluck blends the two styles very well together and creates something both fun and honest. Even with its urban environment and life, Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway still manages to charm and delight. Instead of losing its innocence at the hands of the big, bad city, Runaway manages to bring the rural purity along for the ride. There’s an intentional desire on behalf of Gluck and his team to allow the heart of the Potter characters to remain true to the characters, despite their change in setting.

In fact, that’s very much the point of the story itself.

As Bea’s stories about Peter become a local success, she catches the eye of major publisher, Nigel Basil-Jones (David Oyelowo). Nigel loves her stories yet he also believes they can make the property even more accessible to the masses by steering the characters into increasingly wild scenarios. For Nigel, success is the standard and that can be achieved if Bea is willing to make a few compromises to her material along the way. (After all, who wouldn’t want to see rabbits in space?)

However, are these changes true to Bea’s characters ? Although fame is knocking on their garden door, Bea and Thomas begin to ask themselves whether it’s worth the cost of their integrity. To them, losing the soul of their characters would demonstrate a lack of authenticity to the stories that they had created. (This is also referenced with a hilarious wink at the camera when the rabbits suggest that these types of stories are often adapted poorly, ‘usually by some cocky American’.)

At the same time, Peter is undergoing somewhat of an identity crisis as well. Having been labelled as the ‘bad seed’ of the group, Peter is left despondent. While he’s always known that he’s a little mischievous, he has never thought of himself to be a villain. However, his new label leaves him feeling lost. If others see him as the bad guy, maybe he’s wrong about himself. Then, after meeting Barnabas, Peter is led to explore his own ‘dark side’ to see if he’s really as bad as other’s say. 

Held up against one another, both stories offer slightly different takes on what it means to find out who you are. In The Runaway, Bea and Peter must both ask themselves tough questions about the quality of their character. In this way, the film becomes somewhat of a coming-of-age story as the two wrestle with whether or not the allure of a carefree life of success outweighs the concessions that they must make to get there.

Hopping along with youthful exuberance, Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway is a delightful film with humour and heart. Though this seems like an unlikely take on the material at first, Runaway is a delightful addition to the franchise that expands the world yet maintains its soul. Even if Peter may say that “[he] didn’t think they’d get this far”, I would welcome the chance to return to McGregor’s garden one more time should the opportunity arise.

Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway is available on demand on Friday, July 2nd, 2021.

Goodbye Christopher Robin: Identity Theft

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Blue: “Your childhood. . .” Billy: “. . .Was wonderful. Growing up was hard.”

In a time when people were famous just for being famous, a young boy’s father writes a book with him as a character. Soon, the whole world wants to know and meet the “real” Christopher Robin. Goodbye Christopher Robin is the story of the writing of the Winnie-the-Pooh books and how the success of those books impacted the young son of the author, A. A. Milne.

When Alan Milne (Domhnall Gleeson) returns from World War I, he has become cynical and disillusioned. He silently suffers from what we would now term PTSD. An established playwright, he is unhappy with his life. As he says, “I’ve had enough of making people laugh. I want to make them see.” He moves with his wife Daphne (Margot Robbie) and young son Christopher (who they always call Billy Moon) (Will Tilston) to the country so he can concentrate on writing his book against war. Daphne sees this as a dead end. (“Writing a book against war is like writing a book against Wednesday.”) She returns to London until Alan gets something done. But she leaves the child there in the charge of a nanny, Nou (Kelly MacDonald).

Milne is something of the stereotypical cold, distant father. When Nou must leave for a few days, the father and son are thrown together with very little connection. As Milne steps aside from his writing to be with Billy (Christopher), he discovers a child with a vivid imagination and an innocent, joyful outlook. That becomes the basis for the Pooh books. The books were amazingly successful, bringing the family fame and wealth.

But that success has a price. Soon Billy is deluged with fan mail. Everyone wants to know the real life Christopher Robin. His days are filled with interviews and photo-ops. But is the boy everyone thinks they know from the books the same as the boy in the flesh? As his parents relish the attention, Billy is losing his childhood. Worse, he is losing his sense of self. He wishes that he could go somewhere (if there is any such place in the world) that did not know about Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher Robin. The real Christopher Robin had been eclipsed by the fictional one.

When his father is telling him about the book, Billy asks why he is calling the character Christopher Robin. His father says that it is because that is his real name, but not who he really is. As a result Billy constantly deals with the onus of having to be Christopher Robin to the rest of the world.

That confusion of an existential identity plays out in his relationship with his father and with the world around him. At a publicity event, when Christopher is asked a question, he begins by saying “Blue said… [pause] A. A. Milne… [pause] Daddy…” That is essentially his hierarchy of the relationship he has with his father. Blue is his playmate, A. A. Milne is the writer he lives with. It is only after those two that he sees the man as Daddy. The relationship would be a struggle for them into adulthood.

To know who one is is a fundamental need. We probably all must deal with competing selves: how we see ourselves, how others see us, prejudices, expectations. For young Christopher Robin that struggle defined his life. And for all the fame and adoration, he suffered greatly.

Photos courtesy Twentieth Century Fox Films

The Revenant: Return to the living

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“As long as you can still grab a breath, you fight. You breathe… keep breathing.”

Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s The Revenant fits all the qualifications of a big film: star-caliber acting from Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, and others; astounding cinematography in gorgeous settings; and a story that seems to be larger than life. The film is “inspired by” the legendary life of Hugh Glass, a 19th Century frontiersman about whom various stories, some likely true, but others apocryphal, arose and were embellished by the newspapers of the day.

Guided by sheer will and the love of his family, Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) must navigate a vicious winter in a relentless pursuit to live and find redemption.The film begins as a trapping expedition lead by Captain Andrew Henry (Domhnall Gleeson) is preparing to return back to civilization. After being attacked by Native Americans, they must make their way back over mountains. Glass (DiCaprio) knows the area and convinces the Captain of the plan to get back over strong objections from John Fitzgerald (Hardy). Along the way Glass is attacked and mauled by a grizzly. Along with Glass’s son, Fitzgerald and a young man volunteer to stay with Glass while the others go on. Soon, however, Fitzgerald kills Glass’s son, and convinces the other man they must leave the dying Glass to his fate. But Glass does not die. Rather he battles through recovering from his injuries and slowly makes his way back where he will have revenge on the man left him for dead and killed his son.

On the superficial level, this journey back is a marvel of the human will to survive. From the time he crawls out of the grave Fitzgerald threw him in, Glass must struggle through each day, each step. He survives not only the grizzly attack that initially injures him, but even more trials along the way: waterfalls, warring Native Americans, starvation, and winter.

But there is also a sense in which this is a journey to humanity. Early on in this Odyssey, it seems that Glass survives by reverting to primal, animal behavior. In press notes, Iñárritu says, “Glass’s story asks the questions: Who are we when we are completely stripped of everything? What are we made of and what are we capable of?” I was struck to the way that he seemed very like the bear that had mauled him: wearing the bear skin, grunting in a similar way, catching and eating raw fish. But there are also events that remind him that there is more to his life than just a will to survive. One of the best of those events is the simple act, along with a Native American companion, of catching snowflakes on his tongue.

One of the strongest emotions that drives him is the memory of his love from his son and wife (who was Native American and killed by soldiers). He frequently dreams of their time together and the things that his wife taught him and his son about overcoming fear and troubles. Those memories and the love they represent were as sustaining for Glass as was the food he caught along the way or the healing provided by a Native American who, like him, had lost everything dear to him.

The interplay between the savagery of nature and the façade of civilization serves to provide insight into what it means to be human. Glass must revert to an animal nature to survive the wilderness, but before he can come back to the world of people, he must be reconnected to something that is beyond the animal aspect of who we are.