Even ‘Paddington in Peru’ Feels Political at This Moment

Recently, a student at my 5-year-old’s school left, not just the school, the town, or the state of Massachusetts, but the United States. We’ll call this child “G.”

I’m hazy on the details, though I’d fuzz them up out of propriety if I did know them: whether G’s family left of their own volition, having read the writing on the wall over these last few weeks of unconstitutional actions, or whether they were deported. I do know that G and my own child, Brownie, were friends, and that G’s very best friend is, or now, I suppose, was, “H”; and I know that H is heartbroken over G’s abrupt departure, one day, here, the next day, somewhere else, far, far away.

Were that the whole story I’d label it a tearjerker. There’s more, of course, because no one can let down a kid harder than their parents; it turns out that H’s folks voted for the man who spent his campaign howling about mass deportations and kept on after winning the 2024 election.

I’m saddened by this turn of events, but more than anything, I’m bitterly disgusted with H’s parents, members of that gullible voting bloc taken aback when the leopards they elect eat their faces. How do you tell your child that you’ve failed them so utterly by your choices that you’ve indirectly cost them their friend? H’s parents didn’t sign the order to force G and her family from the U.S., but they supported the party that made it their platform, and that’s about as bad. The outcome is concomitant to their preferences.

My thoughts circled back to G throughout the local press screening of Paddington in Peru, for as much as I chuckled at Paddington Brown’s well-intended blunders and smiled over his clumsy innocence. Parents wary of exposing their kids to reality, rest assured: Paddington in Peru isn’t a political film. If anything, its messages about home as the place you dwell rather than your ancestry, and family comprising more than those you share genes with, verge on bromidic. (You can tell I’ve read more Paddington books to my littles over the years than I’ve managed to read the newspaper.)

The migrant story, of leaving behind the world you know in search of a better life abroad, is key to Paddington’s character, on the page and on screen. Paddington in Peru’s cross-continental adventure foregrounds that theme. A letter arrives at the Brown residence from the Home For Retired Bears, informing them that Paddington’s Aunt Lucy (Imelda Staunton) is acting out of sorts. So he and his adoptive clan—Henry (Hugh Bonneville), Mary (Emily Mortimer), Judy (Madeleine Harris), Jonathan (Samuel Joslin), and Mrs. Bird (Julie Walters)—make for Darkest Peru, his native land, posthaste, where the Home’s Reverend Mother (Olivia Colman), who is definitely not suspicious, reports that Lucy has abruptly gone missing.

Bumps and twists and turns along the road river ensue, but of course we get our promised reunion between Paddington and Aunt Lucy by the end. The moment confronts Paddington with a choice: remain in Peru, or return to London? The Browns recover Lucy in the care of the bear tribe Paddington is actually part of; Lucy, like the Browns, is his found family, who looked after and loved him when he had no one else to shoulder the charge. The bears of El Dorado—not a city of gold but, cleverly, a cloistered resplendent orange grove—make up his true kin.

What’s a bear to do? Obviously, stick with what compelled Michael Bond to write Paddington into existence in the first place. Bond grew up in Reading during World War II, when chaos sent people fleeing to safety over the English channel. His own family opened their home to Jewish children absconded from Nazi Germany; he saw TV newsreels, too, of kids ushered out of London, luggage in tow and labels around their necks. Paddington, as a character and as a series, embodies that spirit of stewardship: the idea that it’s incumbent on us all to care for the less fortunate, always, but especially when they’ve been displaced by unfathomable violence.

Paddington in Peru keeps the loudest part of Bond’s inspirations quiet (though it’s worth noting that disaster and loss likewise spur Lucy to send Paddington to London in the first film). But there’s nothing quiet about Paddington’s decision to stay with the Browns. For him, home is as much a place as a time. His time in Peru ended long ago; his time in London is now. The choice he makes isn’t much of a choice at all. The conclusion is foregone, but so baked into the movie’s plot that it wields immense emotional power regardless. Darkest Peru is where he comes from. 32 Windsor Gardens is where he lives.

Can a children’s movie motivate the actions required to spare families like G’s from the same fate? Probably not. But Paddington in Peru can be a mirror for its core audience, reflecting what’s happening in their country with fresh, vivid clarity; and maybe when that audience comes of age, they’ll be prepared all the more to take action for themselves.