British are coming, to spank us
Just when you thought the whole British nanny thing had crested, in walks a quiet, grim, borderline-grotesque woman in a faded black frock.
She is Nanny McPhee. She flies in accompanied not by a talking umbrella but a homely walking stick; she counsels spoonfuls of sludgy brown elixirs instead of sugar; she wouldn’t think of breaking into song.
“I think she would not necessarily approve of Mary Poppins,” guesses Emma Thompson, who should know, having written “Nanny McPhee” and starred in the title role.
“Nanny McPhee would think that getting large lamps out of carpet bags was a little bit show-offy. And helping children to tidy up their rooms by getting things to jump in the drawers would perhaps not be the thing that engendered most a sense of responsibility.”
Thompson says that responsibility – and the idea that children do not misbehave without motive – were central to her conception of the newly released film, which is very loosely based on the “Nurse Matilda” books from the 1960s and ‘70s.
In Thompson’s reimagining, the Brown family – a father (Colin Firth) and his seven children – descends into wholesale chaos after the death of the children’s mother. The tykes have taken to acting out, which takes the form of well-worn schemes to scare off potential nannies.
It’s a setup instantly familiar, right down to the emotionally absent father – and we’ve every expectation that a practically perfect Julie Andrews will momentarily pop in with her bag.
A bag does indeed arrive, but it’s the nanny herself, a completely shocking creature whose face is a funhouse-mirror version of Thompson’s, a humongous nose orbited by unsightly warts and all manner of gruesomeness.
“When they first put the stuff on my face, I thought, ‘What the hell am I going to do with this? How am I going to move my face?’ ” she says.
In part by design and in part out of necessity, McPhee became a serene, often silent presence.
“She creates space and a calm in which people can work things out for themselves,” says Thompson. “It’s the best kind of parenting, actually, because it’s consistent and judicious, and it’s not unnecessarily kind.”
As she would be the first to admit, Thompson has no credentials in child psychology, and yet you find yourself helpless in the face of her strictures. This is in part the legacy of screen nannies past, not to mention such recent TV imports as “Supernanny” and “Nanny 911.”
What do the British know about parenting that we don’t?
“Perhaps it’s our propensity for rushing around the world telling people what to do,” Thompson says. “It’s a sort of vestigial piece of Empire disguised as a nanny.
“Secretly, Britain is hoping to get America back by sending enough nannies in and slowly transmogrifying the culture. They’re spies.”
The birthday bunch
Comedian Dick Martin is 84. Actor Gene Hackman is 76. Actress VanessXa Redgrave is 69. Musician Phil Collins is 55. Comedian Brett Butler (“Grace Under Fire”) is 48. Actor Christian Bale is 32. Actor Wilmer Valderrama (“That ‘70s Show”) is 26. Actor Jake Thomas (“Lizzie McGuire”) is 16.