Ethel and Ernest: finding poetry in the prose of daily life

An extraordinary British animation about the love of a very ordinary couple

Rafael Hurtado | Nov 3 2017 | comment

Ethel and Ernest: a True Story
Animation directed by Roger Mainwood
Voices of Jim Broadbent, Brenda Blethyn, Luke Treadaway
Runtime: 94 minutes

Ethel and Ernest: a True Story is an superb adaptation of the best-selling graphic novel by Raymond Briggs (The Snowman, Father Christmas), which tells the story of an ordinarily married couple.

No superheroes or interplanetary voyages to save the universe from aliens here. Just the growing love between Ethel and Ernest, Briggs’s parents. She is a conventional homemaker whose passion for her home beautifies and gives grandeur to motherhood; he is a milkman with Bolshie ideas but a good workman and a devoted father.

The story unfolds in London, beginning in the 1920s, passing through the dark days of World War II, and capturing the rapid cultural changes after the war, including the sexual revolution of the 70s.

Married love and the making of a comfortable home are the background music of this marvellous animation. The home is presented as that paradoxical place (in the words of G.K. Chesterton) from which we all come and to which we must always return, for it is there that we are loved unconditionally.

In contrast to dreams of consumerism, the lives of Ethel and Ernest reaffirm that the sweetness of home is found in prosaic daily details of love, not in bigger and faster cars and overseas holidays.

Amazingly, for a contemporary film, it dignifies the role of the housewife and domestic work. Without false embarrassment or inferiority complexes, Ethel is depicted as a sensible woman who knows how to love. Denying maternity and its connection with domestic work is undoubtedly a symptom of social and spiritual decadence. A humanity that sneers at maternity is dying. It’s wonderful to find a film which lovingly reaffirms the beauty of domesticity.

For his part, Ernest reflects the sacrifices that a father must make to care for his primary responsibility: his wife and his children. Some might dismiss Ernest as an old-fashioned employee not a dynamic entrepreneur. But he puts passion into his duties as the father-protector with great intelligence and good sense.

The music of Carl Davis help make this film into an authentic animated classic. If you want to see a film which really places a strong, loving family at the centre of social life, you must watch his magnificent film.

Rafael Hurtado lives in Mexico. He is a contributor to the Rome-based Family and Media website, a MercatorNet partner site. This article is an edited version of the original on the Family and Media blog. Republished with permission.

November 3, 2017

"More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly." That's Woody Allen, quoted by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, at the opening of his wonderful lecture on "Cultural climate change", delivered in New York during the summer and republished today on MercatorNet. "Well, that's how it seems sometimes," he adds to Allen's wisecrack, but that's where the pessimism ends. What follows is a realistic but also optimistic survey of religion in society. Rabbi Sacks is a welcome voice of faith and reason in public life today.

In other articles: Law professor Steven Smith pinpoints the issue behind the pending US Supreme Court case Masterpiece Cakeshop, and similar cases involving vendors who have declined on religious grounds to provide particular message-conveying services for same-sex weddings; Michael Cook shows why there might yet be a 'No' majority in Australia's same-sex marriage referendum; Marcus Roberts looks at what is feeding the opioid epidemic; and Rafael Hurtado highlights a charming animated film about an ordinary British couple of last century: Ethel and Ernest: a True Story. Something to look forward to!