 |
 A regular middle class British family experiences the beginnings of World War II. Greer Garson plays the matriarch of the family as they run into downed German pilots, romance, tragedy, and a rose competition. 1942, 134 minutes
To hear my grandpa talk about it, World War II was a time fraught with danger and drama and filled with sacrifice. It was all about men, some only boys, going toe to toe with the Axis war machine and giving them a receipt for Pearl Harbor. The only thing that kept you going when you and your buddies were being mercilessly cut down by Kraut pillboxes was that pin up of Betty Grable and the prospect of coming back home and driving cheap Japanese cars. To hear Mrs. Miniver talk about it, World War II was all about how the stupid Germans interrupted the local flower show just as a big upset occurred when the flower raised by the stationmaster beat ten time winner Lady Beldon. What should have been a time of heady celebration and rioting instead turned into a mass panic as Nazi bombs began to rain down on the proceedings.
I hesitate to say this because it's going to sound wrong, but didn't I say right from the start back in 1936 when I started this site that no matter what, I wouldn't sugar coat anything for you because that's the job of other reviewers. You know who I'm talking about. They're the punks that suck up to the movies they're supposed to in an effort to curry favor with entertainment types who give them free movies and only bother with the big name releases. I'm not meaning to turn this review of poor old Mrs. Miniver's misadventures at the flower show into a tract about what's wrong with movie reviewers (you can see that during the review of Terror Of Mechagodzilla ) but regardless of what I say, you can take it as gospel. No agendas. No particular prejudice against any particular genre or actor. No trying to get free crap. (If you would like to send me free crap, e-mail me and we'll set that up.) Just a clear-eyed assessment of the movie before me. It's with this dagger-like honesty I put to the throat of every movie I see that I have to say that I was rooting for the Nazis in this one.
I know a guy who told me once that when he was watching The Sound Of Music, that he was rooting for the Nazis. That seemed a bit extreme as I had never seen the movie and couldn't imagine what would have made him put down his copy of The Turner Diaries and go and see that movie in the first place, but at the time he was the leader of our cell, so I wasn't about to challenge his assessment of it. And I sure wasn't going to see that movie to find out for myself. If I want singing and dancing and Nazis, I'll watch The Producers. Anyway, as Mrs. Miniver bought her expensive new hat and Mr. Miniver bought his expensive new car and the stationmaster exhibited his creepy obsession with Mrs. Miniver by naming his rose after her, I was checking my watch wondering when Fritz was going to start firebombing these self-absorbed sissies. And really, I was just hoping that Fritz would do that so that these preening Brits could be jolted out of their decadent malaise and become the Greatest Generation.
I understand that this was made back in 1942 when the Brits were scared by the Germans and needed a pep talk to get them excited about the war. I would note at this point that the movies made during this time about America's involvement in the war were not propaganda pieces designed to raise our spirits, but were merely re-telling all the heroic exploits of our boys as they set about the work of bailing the rest of the world out of the jam all these Eurotrash countries got themselves in. Like we needed any incentive to kick ass when there's a bunch of dictators running roughshod over the prissier countries of the world. The only message these Euro-types need to hear is that freedom isn't free, so strap it on and don't be afraid to interrupt your tea parties to beat back some Teutonic dirtbags when they forget their place.
Well shoot, you went and got me all worked up, but if I'm accused of being a patriot, then I guess I'm guilty as charged. I love America as much as anyone and wouldn't mind explaining what's wrong with these "old world" countries and their constant whining and carping about our "adventurism" in other countries when all we're doing is going in and fixing the stuff the screwed up back when they were colonial powers, but this two-plus hour movie has some issues that need to be addressed and I can't very well do that if busy giving everyone a history lesson that all Americans learned back in first grade. (It's called the Constitution and it says two things: "You make the rules, we break the rules" and "we do what we want when we want.")
Greer Garson ( Mrs. Parkington, Blossoms In The Dust) plays the Mrs. Miniver in question and apparently she's supposed to represent the sturdy British wife that perseveres no matter how tough things become on the homefront, even if that means that she won't be able to buy anymore expensive ugly hats. She's such a pillar of goodness that she even inspires the guy at the train station to call his rose the "Mrs. Miniver" which while quite unsettling at least doesn't assume the familiarity of using Mrs. Miniver's first name, whatever that was. Even the Brits who are psycho are all about manners. Her husband (frequent Garson co-star Walter Pigeon) is an architect and spends his time ignoring his kids so that he can brag all about his new car to his wife. I initially contented myself while wallowing in all this dull domestic bliss that at any moment, Panzers would be grinding that stupid rose into the mud and that Mr. Miniver would be killed in action, no doubt whispering "Mrs. Miniver, you were always my rose."
But the minutes kept ticking away and there was still no signs of anything happening other than a mounting crisis over this rose show. You see, the annual rose show is put on by Lady Beldon and every year she wins the show because no one has the audacity to rise above their station and enter a competing rose. But then the stationmaster decides to buck tradition and enter Mrs. Miniver (hey, I thought that was Mr. Miniver's job!). The village is divided by this and Lady Beldon's granddaughter goes to Mrs. Miniver to ask her to convince the stationmaster to withdraw from the competition. This is what happens in a society that is obsessed with a class system. Thankfully, in America, we're all created equal and there would never be any question that the best rose would win no matter who grew it. (That's another thing in the Constitution. The 39th Amendment says that all sports events will be decided based on who was the best and passed their drug test. Unless, it's one of the men's college sports no one watches, because those will be cut so that the women's field hockey team can stay at the best hotels.)
The Miniver have several annoying kids, but none more annoying than Vin. Vin is a young, not terribly manly looking lad who is back home from Oxford. He's full of new-fangled ideas about how the class system in Britain is wrong and doesn't mind telling this to Beldon's granddaughter, Carol. Do I have to point out that his "new-fangled ideas" were invented by us way back in 1776? In any case, he's a mouthy know it all so Carol immediately falls for him. I would have been clawing my eyes out at this point, but now I was sure that it would be Vin that buys the farm while on some daring air patrol saving Buckingham Palace or the Eiffel Tower or some tourist trap important to those people in that part of the world. They get married straight away since with Vin doomed as a pilot in the RAF, the window for getting laid is rapidly closing.
But a funny thing happens on the way to the war for the Miniver men. They all survive! Mr. Miniver is battling on the homefront, going on patrol and joining a flotilla of civilian boats to help out at Dunkirk. He also spends most of the second half of the film either cowering in his bomb shelter with his family or joking about all the damage the Germans did to his home. Vin flies off on various missions and we always know when he's flying overhead because he makes his engines backfire as his mom gazes longingly up at the sky (more on that icky angle in a moment), but somehow he survives as well! This is a war? Someone has to die, right? So who is the gnarled finger of Death fingerbanging in this one? Carol!
Carol? How the devil does she buy it? You can thank Mrs. Miniver for that! Driving home after the big rose show during an air raid, some shrapnel or a bullet rips through the roof of Mr. Miniver's new car (man, is he going to be pissed!) and kills her, but not before a rather extensive death scene that finally concludes on Mrs. Miniver's kitchen floor. You can pretty much guess what that death scene means - Oscar, baby! That's right, actress Teresa Wright scored an award for Supporting Actress for this role. This was during her two-year heyday that saw her nominated for the same award the year before for The Little Foxes. She was also up for Best Actress when she won for Supporting Actress for her work in The Pride Of The Yankees. I guessed she died as well anybody.
Speaking of the Oscars, this movie is a prime example of why I never watch them. It won a bunch of awards back in 1942, including Best Picture. Ten movies were nominated that year. There was a Cary Grant comedy, The Talk Of The Town, the Jimmy Cagney musical Yankee Doodle Dandy, and a real war movie, Wake Island (we know it's a real war movie because William Bendix is in it). It was also the year that the superior Kings Row was nominated. Of course, we all know the winner should have been Orson Welles' prescient tale of a family in decline, The Magnificent Ambersons . Yet, it was this long, plodding story of a woman who didn't do much of anything for the war effort (sure she captured a downed German pilot, but that was an accident and he was right outside her house) that won.
Greer won an Oscar for this (beating Bette Davis and Katherine Hepburn) and her win is remembered because she gave the longest acceptance speech in the history of the awards (sources place it variously between five and seven minutes). If there is any reason to watch this movie, she would be it, though probably not for why you would think. When you watch this, I want you to pay particular attention to the scenes involving her and her on-screen son Vin. Guess who got married after the movie? That's just plain gross, but at least it makes the movie a little more interesting. In real life, they would be divorced after a couple of years that involved a little professional jealousy on hubby's part as well as him reportedly not enjoying sharing his home with Greer's mom (which is kind of funny in some twisted way). Don't fret for Greer though, because there would a happy ending in the form of Texas millionaire Buddy Fogelson. Sadly, for those of us watching the movie, there would be no oil baron to rescue us.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
|
|
