Ethel and Ernest is a delicate, loving portrait of the animator-author Raymond Briggs’ parents, from their first courtship until their deaths after 40-odd years of marriage, a relationship which Briggs concedes in the opening was rather unremarkable. There really isn’t much ‘action’ in this movie, and as such it’s probably not going to appeal to viewers who need something to happen. It is so tender and so realistic a depiction of two lives that you should watch it anyway. It was eligible for the 2017 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature but was not nominated even though it is #BetterThanBossBaby. You can currently rent or buy it on amazon or iTunes.
The film opens with a quick look at Briggs in his studio, where he explains the film in an almost dismissive way, after which the remainder is animated, starting with the happenstance meeting between Ernest (voiced by Jim Broadbent, aka Horace Slughorn), riding his bike, and Ethel (Brenda Blethyn, Secrets & Lies), a lady’s maid whom he sees as she leans out a second-floor window to air out some linens. The story follows their courtship to marriage to years of hoping for a child, only to have the doctor tell Ernest after Ethel gives birth with great difficulty that they should not have any more children. They survive the Blitz, with Raymond sent to the country twice in the Evacuation, and then worry over their son becoming an artist and a hippie. Then they grow old and pass away within a few months of each other.
If that sounds thin for a 90-minute movie, it is, yet the film works because of the beautiful flow of the script from minute scenes of domestic life through even crises like the bombing of London. (It also leads to a number of jokes about historical events, including the ever-optimistic Ethel, when told that new German Chancellor Adolf Hitler will be selling his book in the UK, saying, “That’s nice of him.”) The couple’s love for each other is contrasted with tiny cracks in the relationship, like Ernest’s blue-collar roots and concerns over anything that’s too “posh,” while Ethel aspires to higher standards of class and wishes to see Raymond do the same through schooling. Ernest’s consciousness of his modest upbringing drives him to buy a television, a phone, a car, all of which seems to dismay Ethel, who doesn’t see why they need any of these trappings of modern life and often delivers some unintentionally humorous responses.
Broadbent and Blethyn are delightful and both are so thoroughly in character that it was easy to forget the famous names behind the voices. The animation mirrors that of the graphic novel on which the film is based, with a quaint, hand-drawn look to the characters – all of whom have impossibly rosy cheeks – and an idyllic backdrop of interwar London before the Blitz sets in. Briggs may not have set out in any way to make a great movie, but by telling the story of his parents’ lives with such love and affection, he’s done just that. Perhaps that is the key: He didn’t try to do too much, so the result is just right.