Mrs. Miniver (1942, William Wyler) (Patreon)

71/100

There’s one big spoiler in here.

Way better than I expected...which is sort of a weird thing to say about a film that not only won the Academy Award for Best Picture (admittedly no guarantee of actual excellence) but was directed by someone with a long history of magnificent work: Counsellor at Law, Dodsworth, The Best Years of Our Lives, The Heiress, etc. Still, it has a somewhat stodgy reputation, and I'd never been in any hurry to watch a story that I assumed would function primarily as maudlin wartime propaganda. That element's certainly there, and the film's exhortatory finale—no doubt stirring at the time, but too Western Union to excite future generations—ensures that it's the lasting impression for many. But I was pleasantly surprised by the emotional detail scattered throughout, in scenes that acknowledge the war either tangentially or not at all. The Minivers' marriage may be idealized, but that doesn't preclude credible needling that speaks of long-term comfort, as when Kay announces "I had a rose named after me today" and gets a reply from Clem in exactly the same conspiratorial sing-song voice: "You left the light on in the dressing room tonight." Absolutely loved eldest son Vin and his insufferable penchant for processing everything via what he's just learned at university last week—dude should be constantly sipping Pierian Spring Water. And Wyler's formal mastery provides constant, sublimely subtle undergirding. I was so struck by one early composition that I made a point of tweeting it out, so that you'll be able to see what I mean about its exquisite horizontal flow: Henry Travers initially alone at center; then Greer Garson entering frame from left; then the short pan right as she leans in to smell the rose, picking up Travers in a previously unestablished mirror as he tilts his head back in ecstasy; then back to the camera's original position, perfectly timed to Travers' exhale. Just a few minutes later, I noted another example—Carol asking Kay for a privilege-inflected favor, and Wyler slyly panning over to include Vin (who we know will object), rather than cutting to the standard reaction shot of his indignation—and then I gave up, because there were too many possibilities and I foresaw this paragraph running incredibly long, which I see now that it's doing anyway. Let's start a new one.

Anyway, point is that Mrs. Miniver both was and wasn't what I'd anticipated, and the ways in which it wasn't landed significantly harder. I confess that I was sucker-punched by the movie's expert bait-and-switch, which sets up Vin as an almost certain casualty and then instead kills off Carol out of nowhere; a knee-jerk part of me objects to the manipulation, but how better to capture the arbitrary nature of suffering in a war that saw both sides target civilians? Likewise endeavored to roll my eyes at Lady Belson awarding first prize to Travers' stationmaster, which is undeniably cheesy...but then got choked up when she announces herself as the second-prize winner and receives thunderous applause, suggesting that the entire town knows that she's just made the least characteristic gesture of her life. Even when I thought the film had made a serious misstep, I sometimes turned out to be mistaken—cutting from the harrowing Blitz sequence straight to the family meeting Vin and Carol at the train station seemed too tonally abrupt, but only until they arrive back at the house and we see that it's now largely a pile of rubble. (Speaking of which, there's nothing like seeing people hunkered down in their homemade bomb shelter as their neighborhood gets demolished to make complaints about sheltering in place during a pandemic seem ultra-whiny.) Plus, believe it or not—I didn't, until I checked—I'd never seen Garson in anything before, apart from the That's Entertainment! franchise. "You've such a way of looking at people!" Lady Belson angrily mutters at one point, and yes indeed. Is Mrs. Miniver as great as The Magnificent Ambersons or The Palm Beach Story or even Cat People? No. But it's no embarrassment to Oscar history.