Christopher Robin is a recent live-action film made by Disney that is based off of the beloved Winnie the Pooh franchise. It's also one of the best examples of archetypal storytelling that I've seen in a while, made more poignant by the fact that its main character, Christopher Robin, would ostensibly seem heroic from certain perspectives even before the story starts.

Christopher Robin trailer by Disney
Before I continue, I want to quickly make a point: If you haven't watched the movie, plan to, and hate spoilers, this is not a review. This is an analysis, and you'll get a truckload of spoilers if you keep reading.

If you want a review, here's a quick one: This is a great movie. The lessons that it has are likely lost on its audience, who haven't had a reason to put themselves in Christopher Robin's adult shoes, but it's never too early to start trying to teach those lessons and hope that they stick, especially in this day and age. If we look at the lessons on resilience and meaningful enjoyment presented in this story, we can see that it's a perfect antidote to some of the chaos that envelops our daily lives.

And even if we don't, it's darn well done. It's a children's movie that I could honestly recommend to adults, even though there are parts that will probably be most powerful for those who have an inter-generational connection or have a fondness for Winnie the Pooh. Despite its target audience, its main character is an adult facing real adult problems, with the interludes that focus on other characters serving to reinforce this point.

Still, as a grown man who sat in the theater and watched it without kids of my own, I found it to be tremendous. I may have even had a couple "allergy" moments throughout.

Yeah, I'm not too proud to admit it. It's a powerful story about finding meaning in your life, and that means that it hits hard sometimes.

The Heroic Cycle

One of the things that's interesting from an archetypal analysis standpoint is that the Hero's Journey typically works in a particular way.

Most stories start with a hero who is by definition young and untested, then put them through a trial that proves their ability to grow.

In Christopher Robin, this is turned on its head in many ways. While the first encounters between Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh happen in Robin's childhood, the first fifteen minutes or so of the movie go through his transformation from a boy to a man to a father and company man.

This is interesting because the Hero's Journey typically depends on a transition from being uninitiated to mastering the ordinary world of the hero and the threats and hazards of a supernatural world that they must venture into when they seek their fortune and growth.

In Christopher Robin, we get to see a character who is more mature. Since the title character has already gone through a variety of trials; from the experience of being sent away to boarding school to the loss of his father, to fighting in WWII and having a child and career, the story picks up on development half-way through a heroic cycle, but after many previous heroic cycles have been completed.

For context, let's consider Pearson's archetypes.

In Pearson's archetypes, there is a generally consistent motion from birth to wisdom, with the beginning archetypes of the Innocent and Orphan wanting to reach a secure place in the universe and the Sage and the Fool, at the end of the heroic cycle, wanting to use their wisdom for the greater good.

This is a gross simplification (I suggest Pearson's book as a good source for further info, which I will naturally drop an affiliate link for), since each archetype reflects a personal journey in its own right, but there is a journey from being uninitiated to being heroic that involves more than just a single transformation.

Christopher Robin starts out in a later stage of his life than most heroes, and this lets him handle issues that are more adult than childish. I'd even dare to draw a comparison to a character like Jean Valjean from Les Miserables, whose previous life experiences cause him to walk a very different path than a typical youthful hero, though obviously the tone of Christopher Robin is much lighter and aimed at children.

In particular, I would argue that Winnie the Pooh represents the Fool archetype, and that Christopher Robin walks the Fool's Path as the plot of the movie unfolds.

The Fool's Path

To be successful, the Fool needs to do three things:

• Celebrate the good things that can be found in normal life.
• Understand the need for some control over their ego.
• Serve as a beacon for others to follow on the path to wisdom.

It's important to note that the Fool is often associated with a medieval jester, the sort of figure who we see again and again in stories, including many examples from Shakespeare, in an archetypal sense as someone who is able to speak unpopular truths and accept a meaning of the universe untainted by the society around them.

However, the Fool needs to understand their role in a complex web of pride and self-indulgence.

Christopher Robin starts with no problems with overindulgence, but he does have a problem with self-indulgence. When confronted with a task, he feels that it is his responsibility and values it highly. He continues to place an unrealistic priority on these tasks even when he later finds out that other people consider it much less important than he does, and much of his focus is misplaced in terms of how he is trying to solve his problems.

Essentially, at the start of the story Robin finds himself stuck at a point of identity crisis. Lacking the perspective of the Fool from which to guide his life, he takes responsibility for things that aren't his, and like a Sage who has not reached maturity he believes that he have found "the way things are", even though he does not have the ability to make the world a better place with what he knows.

This leads to a cascade of further problems as Robin makes mistake after mistake while trying to

One of the things that the Fool understands is that a miserable life leads to stress, and that a certain amount of self-indulgence is healthy. Because Robin focuses on his work and not his family, he is relatively successful in one area of his life (but prevented from being wildly successful due to the stress, malaise, and fatigue brought on by a lack of balance), but fundamentally unhappy in others.

Worse, he is not only fundamentally unhappy with his family life, but he doesn't realize that he is unhappy until others point out the decaying relationships he has with his wife and daughter and his lack of connection with others, who he generally views as a hindrance to his "serious work" and ignores or avoids.

There's a poignant scene early on in the movie where his daughter asks him to read to her at bedtime, and he picks up and starts reading a book on the Victorian Era instead of the copy of Treasure Island that his daughter pulls out of a nightstand while he's looking in the other direction.

The Fool recognizes that too much excess, even in the name of seeking "moderation", can be dangerous, and that a balance must be struck between the overindulgence of the hedonist and pure asceticism of the extreme hermit, whose wisdom will ultimately be wasted by never being shown to others. Of course, this doesn't mean that every ascetic is flawed; rather, it means that those who are ascetic without good cause and an understanding that they have chosen that path deliberately fail to comprehend their own right to happiness.

Life Unguided is Life Wasted

For a story where one of the most valuable lessons is "learning to do nothing", the film raises a key point about what is actually meaningful in our life.

The central conflict can be summed up as the cosmic struggle to find meaning perceived through the microcosm of Christopher Robin's family life.

One of the issues is that while Christopher Robin would say that his family are important to him, and his co-workers are important to him, and so forth, he isn't actually placing them at the center of his life.

Instead, his life is unguided–having only the most nominal distinction of identity to set him apart from the faceless masses and bootlicking underlings that he interacts with on a daily basis, Christopher Robin spends every night at home in much the same way as an exile returning to his home country.

While the semblance of a relationship is there, his disconnection from his family, which stems from an unguided life that places undue priority on a nine-to-five day job, means that Christopher Robin has no way to orient his life, to find a compass that always points north.

This is reflected in a scene in the film where he gives Winnie the Pooh a compass and the two then go about in circles for a while, with Christopher Robin so focused on the navigation permitted by the compass that he forgets that his companion's focus on the world around him means that he's not going to follow a needle pointing north.

Metaphorically, it would seem that the blind are leading the blind, but Pooh's actions, though not presented as deliberate, provide a clue for the audience and for Robin: society can send a message about what we should do with our lives, but only we can decide if following that message will bring us purpose.

In the end, Christopher Robin is able to choose proper priorities in the form of his family and the inhabitants of the Hundred Acre Woods, rather than the doldrums of work.

How Stories Meet Needs

The story of Christopher Robin is so powerful because it speaks to an unmet need. In a day and age of constant testing, classrooms, and social pressures, even children find themselves in a world where play and discovery are second to centrally planned activities and industrial lifestyles.

A side-plot in the movie shows Robin's young daughter Madeline having a conflict between preparing for boarding school to make her family happy while really wanting nothing other than an authentic relationship with her father. At the start of the story, this conflicted motive is an important driver of the plot: Christopher's desires to do the right thing by his daughter also threaten her well-being, an example of Pearson's tragic Caregiver who attempts to nurture their children without knowing what is needed.

However, Madeline is able to easily connect to this world of play and mystery once it is revealed to her; she doesn't need that much help because of her mother's encouragement and the resilience of youth.

The more pressing need, however, is reconciliation with her family. We can see in Madeline characteristics that Pearson would identify as belonging to the Orphan; an increasing cynicism about her surroundings coupled by a desire to illustrate self-sufficiency (despite, of course, her deeper need being for a connection with her father).

Christopher Robin is really a family movie in the deepest sense of the word; the whole film is about the importance and value of family. I don't want to dwell on a commentary on the present day, but I think that it's definitely relevant to our times. Never before in the history of humankind have so many been so busy with so little.

In this film, however, the priorities are placed where they should be: the Robin family moves away from shallow, superficial goals and anxiety of the modern world (despite the film being set in the early-to-mid 20th century) to the deeper meaningful goals of family, camaraderie, and celebrating life.

The Role of Evelyn

Any analysis of the film would be lacking without a serious discussion of Robin's wife and the significance she plays in the story, but she is one of the most important figures (if not the most important) in the story.

She is a sort of ideal for Christopher Robin, being a model of what he should be, and a valuable ally while also being a source of conflict. Due to Christopher's choices, he has driven his marriage to the brink of ruin, but Evelyn is doing her best to help awaken him to the problem in his life, being a sort of archetypal mentor figure to her husband.

While the fundamental message of Christopher Robin is the need for family–and friends–and remembering to appreciate that need, Evelyn adds in an additional element of marriage, commitment, and understanding the ideals. She serves as a compass; her approval is important to Christopher throughout the film, even though he often acts in ways that ultimately disappoint her.

A large part of the conflict can be painted as a conflict that the protagonist faces between his social contract to work as a professional and his challenges in keeping his marriage vow and commitment to his family. In an ideal understanding of the universe, this flows from the perspective that since his family is important, Christopher Robin works to support them, but in the early parts of the movie, this is rephrased simply as the assertion that Christopher Robin works to support his family.

The loss of attention to the commitments that make up his life cause the main conflict, and Evelyn is a great figure to help drive the plot forward and indicate Christopher Robin's progress (or setbacks) throughout the story.

Wrapping Up

It took me longer than I planned to finish this, so Christopher Robin may be a little less simple to find in theaters than when I saw it, but I can heartily recommend it as an example of a story that tells important lessons.

It also tells these lessons in a strong archetypal framework, showing us the secrets not only of ourselves but of the universe.