If anyone ever asks you what the phrase "Keep calm and carry on" really means as it was originally intended, show them Mrs. Miniver. It might as well be the slogan of this movie.
Made in 1942 and set in 1939 and 1940, the plot centers around an upper middle class English family living in the English countryside just outside London. It first shows a glimpse of their lives just before WWII breaks out. The husband is a successful architect, the titular Mrs. Miniver a cheerful housewife. They have three children and a few servants, and live in a beautiful house. Their oldest son comes home from college for a visit, spouting philosophy as only the young and idealistic can. He meets and is smitten with the sweet, lively granddaughter of the local lady of the manor. The lady herself reminded me of the Dowager Countess on Downton Abbey: old-fashioned but always ready with a cutting quip and not so unbendable as she first appears.
The war begins and very quickly everything changes. The Minivers' son joins the Air Force and begins hasty training to combat German bombers, which very soon begin to drone overhead and wreck havoc. Blackout curtains hang everywhere and the family digs a bomb shelter out back, to which they are forced to frequently retreat. Mr. Miniver is called out with other civilian boat owners to assist with the retreat at Dunkirk and does not return for days. During this time, a downed German fighter pilot who had thus far evaded capture invades the Miniver home and threatens Mrs. Miniver at gunpoint. She bravely waits until he faints from his injuries, takes his gun and calls the police. When he wakes, he rants about how the Germans will soon own the world while she listens in mute horror. Once he is taken away, Mr. Miniver returns home, as does their son. He marries his sweetheart, but she is quickly killed in a bombing raid, along with many others in the village, and the family's home is partially destroyed while they cower in their bomb shelter. Through it all, Mrs. Miniver keeps the proverbial stiff upper lip. She remains as cheerful as she can and stoically makes the best of everything with a smile plastered on her face. Sometimes it's even genuine.
The tragic irony of the war coming home for the Brits is of course made manifest in the death of the son's wife: she is killed by machine gun fire while her husband, the Air Force pilot, lives to come home. In our Oscar movies about the previous war, it was all of the young men who went off to inevitably die in the trenches or in aerial dogfights. No one is safe in this war, and all the British people can do is Keep Calm and Carry On, as the pastor giving his eulogy for the wife and the others in the village killed in the bombing raid makes abundantly clear as he stands in the ruins of the church. They are all at war, not just the soldiers, and if they all do not fight, they are lost. A convenient plea to the watching American audience to buy war bonds immediately follows the list of the movie's cast, which, I admit, left me with the impression that the entire movie was nothing but an extra-long, very well-made ad for the war effort.
It is interesting to think about the impact of this movie, since when it was made the outcome of the war was far from certain. Indeed, Germany, Italy, Japan and the Soviet Union stood poised to own a good chunk of the globe and the Allies were only beginning to make any headway in fighting back.The Battle of Midway, the first big American victory in the Pacific, took place the very day this movie was released to theaters. The Blitz and Pearl Harbor were recent, very raw, memories. The invasion of Normandy was exactly two years away. This movie was very timely and very needed to keep up everyone's morale, knowing this was going to be a long, bloody global war in which civilians in Europe and Asia would be in as much danger as active troops. It was a reminder to try to cling to normalcy as much as possible and to remember the good in life in the face of that danger. For that alone, I can see why it won the Oscar.
Watched: November 25, 2017
No comments:
Post a Comment