Ethel & Ernest was one of my favourite books growing up, I remember getting it out of the school library and being transfixed by its warmth and simple beauty.
I was worried and unnerved by the film adaptation when it was announced and the trailer spooked me into thinking they'd add a load of subplots and shy away from the book's bleak final scenes.
I sat down to watch it on Christmas telly 2016 with my own parents and from the charming live-action Ray introduction I knew it was going to be alright. It sticks rigidly to the book - adding little and removing even less. It was heartbreaking to see it in beautiful motion, replicating his style deftly - stretching scenes out to work physically and filling them with gorgeous colour. There are some vaguely jarring uses of 3D mixed in but usually the intricate models fit in seamlessly. As we watched my parents reminisced about their own childhoods with each other, laughing at the funny bits and falling utterly silent at the occasional harrowing jab (which increase as the story reaches its unflinching conclusion) "You have all this to come" said my dad with a characteristically morbid tone.
Afterwards they both agreed to have been moved by it and Ethel & Ernest was trending country-wide on Twitter. One tweet reading "house of adults ranging between 39 and 73 all in tears here". Knowing that the famously grouchy Briggs had himself wept upon seeing his parents in motion again adds another tinge of unprecedented emotion to all of it - one my favourite ever books somehow brought respectfully to life and touching generations of people up and down the country. Evoking in all of them what it had done for me all those decades ago as I sat crying on my bed after school at the long lost life of an unextraordinary couple that I'd never known.
I was worried and unnerved by the film adaptation when it was announced and the trailer spooked me into thinking they'd add a load of subplots and shy away from the book's bleak final scenes.
I sat down to watch it on Christmas telly 2016 with my own parents and from the charming live-action Ray introduction I knew it was going to be alright. It sticks rigidly to the book - adding little and removing even less. It was heartbreaking to see it in beautiful motion, replicating his style deftly - stretching scenes out to work physically and filling them with gorgeous colour. There are some vaguely jarring uses of 3D mixed in but usually the intricate models fit in seamlessly. As we watched my parents reminisced about their own childhoods with each other, laughing at the funny bits and falling utterly silent at the occasional harrowing jab (which increase as the story reaches its unflinching conclusion) "You have all this to come" said my dad with a characteristically morbid tone.
Afterwards they both agreed to have been moved by it and Ethel & Ernest was trending country-wide on Twitter. One tweet reading "house of adults ranging between 39 and 73 all in tears here". Knowing that the famously grouchy Briggs had himself wept upon seeing his parents in motion again adds another tinge of unprecedented emotion to all of it - one my favourite ever books somehow brought respectfully to life and touching generations of people up and down the country. Evoking in all of them what it had done for me all those decades ago as I sat crying on my bed after school at the long lost life of an unextraordinary couple that I'd never known.