{"id":6458,"date":"2018-03-15T11:48:17","date_gmt":"2018-03-15T15:48:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=6458"},"modified":"2018-03-15T11:48:17","modified_gmt":"2018-03-15T15:48:17","slug":"ethel-and-ernest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2018\/03\/15\/ethel-and-ernest\/","title":{"rendered":"Ethel and Ernest."},"content":{"rendered":"

Ethel and Ernest<\/em> is a delicate, loving portrait of the animator-author Raymond Briggs\u2019 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\u2019t much \u2018action\u2019 in this movie, and as such it\u2019s 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<\/a> or iTunes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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<\/em>), a lady\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n

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, \u201cThat\u2019s nice of him.\u201d) The couple\u2019s love for each other is contrasted with tiny cracks in the relationship, like Ernest\u2019s blue-collar roots and concerns over anything that\u2019s too \u201cposh,\u201d while Ethel aspires to higher standards of class and wishes to see Raymond do the same through schooling. Ernest\u2019s consciousness of his modest upbringing drives him to buy a television, a phone, a car, all of which seems to dismay Ethel, who doesn\u2019t see why they need any of these trappings of modern life and often delivers some unintentionally humorous responses. <\/p>\n

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\u2019 lives with such love and affection, he\u2019s done just that. Perhaps that is the key: He didn\u2019t try to do too much, so the result is just right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ethel and Ernest is a delicate, loving portrait of the animator-author Raymond Briggs\u2019 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\u2019t much \u2018action\u2019 in this movie, and as such it\u2019s probably not going to appeal to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[925,37,215],"class_list":["post-6458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2017-movies","tag-animation","tag-movies","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6458"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6459,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6458\/revisions\/6459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}