Mrs. Miniver

"I don't like politics in my movie." It's the modern refrain from whiny crybabies (usually ones who use the word "woke" as a pejorative) who think that movies that reflect on social or political themes are somehow a 21st century invention. The truth they don't want to admit is that politics have always been present in movies. If anything, they're LESS prevalent now than they used to be, and definitely not as overt. The next time some overly sensitive nimrod who thinks Hollywood is furthering a political agenda, you can point to Mrs. Miniver, a movie so overt, its end-credits "BUY WAR BONDS" message feels both like a logical conclusion and a ridiculous punchline. I'd describe Mrs. Miniver's plot, but it doesn't really have one. It's basically "how one British family deals with the onset of World War II". That's basically it. Their oldest son comes home from Oxford, courts the granddaughter of the town's rich old woman, war breaks out, he enlists in the RAF, Mrs. Miniver's husband is called in to help with the Dunkirk evacuation, the Miniver boy and his girl get married, the war continues, there's a local flower competition ... it really is just a year in the life of a family in wartime. If the thoroughly English concepts of "stiff upper lip" and "hanging on in quiet desperation" could be corporealized into a movie, it would be Mrs. Miniver. As such, Mrs. Miniver is a product of its time, and in multiple ways. It is difficult, nigh on impossible in fact, to relate to the time and place and circumstances. It doesn't that the movie can't even commit to one of its own premises, which is a look at class struggles. To read any description of the movie, the Minivers are supposed to be middle-class, which creates some drama when he starts courting the upper class Carol Belden. But the Minivers have house staff, and their son goes to Oxford. When their house is damaged in the Blitz, they brush it off as something they just need to clean up, even though parts of their house are nothing but piles of rubble. In the beginning, Kay Miniver buys an expensive hat and is nervous breaking the news to her husband, while he buys a car and feels the same way. This never becomes a plot point. THIS IS NOT HOW THE MIDDLE CLASS OPERATE. This is "rich people" and "richer people". That's as much a class struggle as a river feeding into a lake is a natural disaster. It also doesn't help that, until the last ten minutes (hold onto this, we'll come back to it), everything breaks the Miniver's way. In one afternoon, she finds a runway German soldier in her garden, her husband comes home from Dunkirk, and her son comes back from his first sortie. Time and again, the family faces adversity and just skates on through it, no big whoop. By the end, I was begging for something, anything, to happen to give this movie some emotional impact, because it was so damned dull. But I believe that's by design, because it serves the movie's general purpose. When it came out in 1942, the war was still raging. The United States had only joined the war six months prior, while England had been bombarded for over two years. The spirit of Mrs. Miniver, the way the family keeps walking through life's challenges, feels like a message to citizens to persevere, that everybody's efforts were needed to win the war. Mrs. Miniver feels less like a movie and more like how-to-live-through-war-and-be-productive propaganda. "If you just keep at it," it says, "you'll be okay, we're all in this together." And then the end happens. Death finally hits the Miniver family, and in the most unexpected way. The last five minutes or so are of a church service in a bombed-out church, the small town refusing to let the dilapidated ruins of their house of worship stop them from following their faith. The movie's final words are literally a sermon, where the priest tells the crowd both in the movie and those watching that though there will be loss and bloodshed and death, it is our duty to continue on and fight for freedom. It is as transparently propagandistic as possible, and it is in no way, shape, or form ashamed of being so. I am in awe of its naked audacity. I'm almost impressed ... but as the ending to a movie, it is downright awful. A child, a character we've seen that has been important to one of the subplots, and someone connected to the Minivers are all killed, two off-screen. The rush to add a human toll in the final minutes so it doesn't feel so much like a squeaky-clean Hollywood ending is unearned and gross. Yes, death is not conveniently timed in real life, especially when it's caused by falling bombs. But after two hours of the Minivers having everything break their way to the point that it feels like divine guidance, the sudden, literally last-minute twist of the knife doesn't feel natural. It feels like a mandate, a way to say to the viewer "none of us are safe, but we must carry on". This could've been shown at any time in the movie, but to have it be the last few minutes is such a sour way to end things. It's a shame, because the movie is shot wonderfully, the score is lovely, Greer Garson is excellent as the titular character, and Teresa Wright (whom I first saw in Shadow Of A Doubt) is the kind of spitfire young lady of the era that is a joy to watch. The surrounding movie, unfortunately, is just so dull and obvious in its purpose. The fact that it won the Best Picture award feels less like a deserved honor and more of a way to reward a studio for serving the war effort. And because it exists to be little more than a rah-rah-yay-war puff piece, it feels so dated and clunky, there's little reason to remember it, let alone watch it, outside of some good performances.