Prospero | Paddington

UKIP, pursued by a bear

A new kids' film with a pro-immigrant message

By P.J.C.

MANY Britons were raised on tales of Paddington, the second-best-known bear in fiction after Winnie-the-Pooh. A kind of ursine Jacques Tati, the well-meaning Paddington caused chaos wherever he went through a mixture of clumsiness and cultural misunderstanding; the best moments usually involved his clashes with pompous British officialdom.

A new film version, directed and written by Paul King, focuses on a quality for which the British once prided themselves—a welcoming attitude towards refugees. An archetypal British explorer called Montgomery Clyde (who travels with grand piano and grandfather clock) meets Paddington's aunt and uncle, introduces them to the joys of marmalade, and tells them of the warm welcome they can expect in London. When an earthquake destroys their home in "darkest Peru", Paddington is duly sent to London to seek shelter.

Arriving at Paddington station (from which he gets his name), the bear is initially spotted by Mr Brown, a stuffy middle-class Englishman (played by Hugh Bonneville, Lord Grantham from "Downton Abbey"). The initial reaction of several characters is to display their prejudices about immigrants. Mr Brown believes that they invent sob stories in order to ask for money, and his nosy neighbour, Mr Curry (Peter Capaldi), worries aloud about the prospects for "jungle music" from the house next door. Later on, evil taxidermist Millicent warns Curry that "it starts with one bear and pretty soon it will be the whole street."

Meanwhile a calypso band pops up from time to time to reinforce the contrast between a jolly, culturally diverse Britain and the mean-mindedness of Mr Curry, whose idea of a slap-up meal is meat-paste sandwiches. And Paddington's best friend from the books, antique shop-owner Mr Gruber, is revealed to be a survivor of the kindertransport who has become a pillar of the local community. By the end of the film, even the stuffy Mr Brown has warmed to the bear, declaring that "even if he's from a different species, he's still family."

If this interpretation had been served up by the BBC, the publicly subsidised national broadcaster, the howls of protest from the Daily Mail and Nigel Farage, leader of the anti-immigrant UK Independence Party, would have been deafening. But this is a commercial film, and is thus subject to the vicissitudes of public taste. The early indications are that it will be a hit (it topped the British charts on its first weekend); the West London cinema your blogger attended was packed at 3pm on a busy pre-Christmas shopping day. It was a reminder that UKIP polls relatively poorly in multicultural London and that its national ratings are still in the mid-teens, well below the Front National in France. (It has achieved a bigger share in by-elections and European elections but on a low turnout.) Not everyone in Britain is a "little Englander"; a lot of people, if they met Mr Farage, would be tempted to follow Paddington's example and give him "a particularly hard stare".

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