The CineFiles

Starting off SIFF 2017 with not so much a bang, as a gentle, human story of two people who meet, fall in love, get married, raise a family, grow old together and die during some of the most eventful times in England during the 20th century. I highly recommend Ethel & Ernest, both the film and the graphic novel on which it was based. The art and animation are just gorgeous and so full of lovely details. To my eye, it’s a fantastic marriage of 2D line art and 3D computer modeled framework that just works like visual magic. It’s also really refreshing to see an animated film about real ordinary people and how extraordinary world events of geopolitics come to affect their lives.  They’re not the chosen ones or possessed of amazing gifts, they don’t alter the course of history, they just live and love and work and parent and die like everyone else and, through the eyes of their son, they seem utterly amazing. Ethel & Ernest made me miss my own Grammy and Pap-Pap something terrible as I definitely see them in the title characters. “Television? What’s that called when it’s at home?” was such a Grammy type of thing to say. I definitely wish I’d brought a pack of tissues, as it was definitely a film that required a hanky or two.