“Paddington” is 10 years old, but the bear’s lessons of kindness and curiosity are timeless

Ten years ago (give or take a few odd days), a curious, marmalade-loving bear named Paddington tumbled his way into theaters, and in turn, our hearts. 

Eight years ago, an incurious, discord-loving boar named Trump tumbled his way into office, and in turn, the rot of our collective consciousness. 

In a way, these historic events are fitting for the year’s first month. January is a time for new beginnings. We write down our resolutions, stretch our bodies, catch up on work and get off caffeine for as long as possible before the sweet, sweet lure of hot coffee pulls us back in on a cold winter morning. Even if one can’t keep up with all the intentions they set, we allow ourselves grace, remembering that, no matter how old we get, change isn’t always easy. It’s that kindness and good nature that Paddington, the London-dwelling bear by way of Darkest Peru, has always led with. Whether he’s adventuring in creator Michael Bond’s children’s books, making the jump to animated TV series or most recently, the big screen, Paddington always sees the best in people. He understands the capacity for human goodness, and even if his adversaries don’t see that virtue within themselves, Paddington’s follies have a way of drawing it out of them.

Call me pessimistic, but Donald Trump is far past that point. Whatever grace there was at the start of his tenure in the Oval Office — the pleas of, “Well, just wait and see, give him a chance to prove himself” — quickly dissipated within his first weeks in office. Over the four years that followed, Trump went on to sow discord and division among Americans. His policies and personality turned over America’s wretched underbelly, allowing it to breathe and strengthen itself. There was no shortage of contentious presidencies before Trump’s first years in office, but his disseminated rage for the digital age, leaving the country fractured in ways once thought unimaginable. 

Fractured is, coincidentally, exactly how I feel today. I am at once celebrating the tenth anniversary of “Paddington” releasing in theaters stateside and dreading the inauguration ceremony for Trump’s second term. Paddington’s unstoppable force meets Trump’s immovable object, and I’m being flattened in the middle as they duke it out. 

But the funny thing is that these two events can coexist, and they have to. They represent the clash between lawful good and chaotic evil, and how there cannot be one without the other. It may very well sound naive and a bit insipid, but Paddington and Trump are the perfect, easily digestible images of moral balance. These are two larger-than-life characters whose antics allow for an elementary-level understanding of good and evil. Sometimes it’s perfectly fine to abandon nuance (at least for a bit) to look at the world in rudimentary ways. There’s comfort in reminding ourselves of the sweet, friendly, palatable values that the good bear extols, and there has never been a better time to do that than today.

If you’re somehow unfamiliar with Paddington Bear, voiced by Ben Whishaw in the series, “Paddington” kicks off with a delightful crash course in his history. Well, delightful in the way that the opening of “Up” is sweet. There are a few tears to shed right at the top of the film when an earthquake hits the jungles of Darkest Peru, and Paddington’s beloved Uncle Pastuzo (Michael Gambon) is a casualty of the disaster. Happily, Paddington’s Aunt Lucy (Imelda Staunton) is alright. Their sprawling jungle home, however, is not so lucky. The bears lived in a treehouse surrounded by innovative systems of rigs and pulleys. Lucy and Pastuzo picked up engineering — and human speech — from the great English explorer Montgomery Clyde (Tim Downie) decades prior. They also developed a love of marmalade after raiding Montgomery’s rations, and have carried on the tradition of making bright orange marmalade sandwiches ever since.

After losing both Pastuzo and her home, Lucy decides that it’s time to make good on Montgomery’s promise that, if the bears should ever find themselves in London, they’ll be greeted with a warm welcome and a place to call home. She arranges for Paddington to stow away on a cargo ship to England and tells him to write to her at the Home for Retired Bears. “They will not have forgotten how to treat a stranger,” Lucy tells her nephew before bidding him farewell.

On Inauguration Day, this line feels like a knife to the stomach. It does any other day, too, but with such a close-minded political figure entering back into public office, Aunt Lucy’s words are particularly cutting. I remember the fear felt amid the initial days of Trump’s first term when his travel ban foreshadowed the relentless pursuit and degradation of anyone non-white that would come to define his political ethos. Years into his incumbency, Trump’s approach to the COVID-19 pandemic was more of a shrug than a response and innumerable people suffered and died because his action was so leisurely. 

There was a distinct lack of compassion for strangers in Trump’s first term, and yet care and connection with our fellow humans — especially those we don’t know personally — define life. Whether by giving a person directions or helping someone reach an item on a tall shelf in the grocery store, our lives are buoyed by fleeting interactions with people we don’t know. Yet with expansive digital worlds at our fingertips, it’s so simple to surround ourselves with a bubble. We lap up what algorithms feed us and spend so much time connecting with loved ones only through our screens. We “meet” new people by following them. I’m keenly aware that, at 30 years old, I already sound like I’m yelling at a cloud. But is it any wonder that so many people have forgotten how to treat strangers when our world is designed to keep these interactions from us in the first place?

The primary, overarching lesson in the first “Paddington” film is that keeping your mind and heart open is critical for a happy, fulfilled life. When Paddington gets to London and first meets the Brown family — Mr. Henry Brown (Hugh Bonneville), Mrs. Mary Brown (Sally Hawkins) and their children Judy (Madeleine Harris) and Jonathan (Samuel Joslin) — their brood has a hard time staying receptive to the joys of the world as it is. Henry is overprotective while Mary is overbearing and suffering from artist’s block. Then there’s Jonathan, whose curious nature is stifled by his parents’ caution, and Judy, who is entering her defiant adolescence and unwilling to talk much to her parents at all. But when they pass a sweet bear in the train station, Mary can’t help but stop in her tracks. After some nudging, Henry allows her to bring Paddington home for one night, after which they’ll either find him a willing home or, if Henry has his way, drop the bear at an orphanage.

Of course, neither of those things ever happen. Paddington convinces Mary that they can track down the great explorer who knew his aunt and uncle, and their adventure begins. Along the way, a maniacal museum taxidermist named Millicent (a delightfully wicked Nicole Kidman) hears word of a talking bear running around London and sets out to hunt Paddington down. Millicent isn’t concerned about anyone other than herself and her legacy, and she knows that a rare species of talking bear will be the perfect fit to round out the museum’s collection of exotic animals. 

If Paddington is the personification (or, bearification) of the capacity for human kindness, Millicent is his foil. Instead of looking at the bigger picture by studying and celebrating an endangered species she knows little of, she intends to quash it and stuff it. Like Trump’s attempt at being a legitimate politician, Millicent is simply wearing the costume of a scientist. She’s neither inquisitive nor adept; rather, she’s violent and utterly hateful — even if she looks a lot more stylish in her crusade against our hero than Trump does in his poorly tailored suits. Millicent doesn’t really care about what she does for work, only that she’s perceived as the best at it; she sounds a lot like someone who responds to every criticism of his policies and personality with resounding certainty that he’s the greatest to ever live.

Should this be your first time seeing “Paddington,” I won’t spoil all the fun. But one of the most joyous parts of watching and rewatching Paul King’s wonderful movie is that it’s happily running on the last vestiges of Obama-era twee. The production design is colorful and cozy, livening the film with its own cheerful visual throughline. Some parts of it feel so quirky that it’s as if they were intentionally designed to become viral gifsets on Tumblr while the platform was bowing out of its own Obama-era heyday. Just watching and enjoying the movie — and certainly, my directly comparing Paddington to Donald freaking Trump — can feel a lot like “libbing out,” a phrase that uses irony to brush off how good it can feel to be hopeful in a dire political climate. 

But is there anything so wrong with that? Have we let ourselves be so beaten down by four years of the Trump administration and the festering decay it wrought that our desire to feel good has to be couched by doing it ironically? The “Paddington” movies are universally beloved for their upbeat outlook and sentimentality, yet they oppose the world they exist in. That’s what makes them so special! These films don’t ignore our harsh realities, they stare bitterness down in defiance. Paddington even shoots Mr. Brown unyielding eye contact when his guardian responds rudely to an earnest thought. “It’s called a hard stare,” Paddington says. “My aunt taught me to do them when people have forgotten their manners.”

So, no, there’s nothing wrong with a little libbing out if it means practicing good manners and keeping a generally friendly disposition. Wearing rose-colored glasses sparingly won’t affect our vision. By reminding ourselves of the virtues that this sweet little bear embraces — even if they come in the form of brightly colored cinematic candy, like “Paddington” — we’ll be more likely to notice opportunities to bring those values into our daily lives. The alternative to practicing kindness is to sit in the dread and fear of Inauguration Day, isolating ourselves. That isolation only makes us cold, cruel, unfriendly, unloving and incurious when we venture into the world and cross paths with all of the incredible people who inhabit it. Detachment is what the enemies of a hopeful, affectionate future want, and Paddington would never stand for such a thing! He would want us to be analytical and good-natured, maybe even a little nosy; not just tolerant, but actively welcoming.

Though both the bear and the bore are competing for my attention today, I am choosing to spend some time with Paddington. If you find yourself similarly filled with terror over Trump’s second term, desperate to remember all the good that still exists in the world, I’d suggest you do the same. It will be the reassurance you need, one cartoon figure over the other. Even on the darkest of days, Paddington’s sticky orange marmalade still catches the light.