Peter Viney's Blog

The Secret Garden
2020

Directed by Marc Munden
Written by Jack Thorne
Based on the novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Music by Dario Marianelli

CAST:

Dixie Egerickx – Mary Lennox
Edan Hayhurst – Colin Craven, her cousin
Julie Walters – Mrs Medlock, the housekeeper
Colin Firth – Mr Craven
Isis Davis – Martha, a servant
Amir Wilson – Dickon, Martha’s brother

In flashback
Maeve Dermody- Alice, Mary’s mother
Jemma Powell – Grace, Colin’s mother
(Alice and Grace are twins)

Sky Movies

They’re all rolling out the big films for autumn semi-lockdown. Netflix has Rebecca and Trial of The Chicago Seven, Amazon Prime has Parasite and the new Borat movie. Sky are wading in with The Secret Garden. It’s easy to totally ignore the main TV channels constant fare of cooking, ambulances, operations, woodworking and pointless countdown wall quizzes. We have.

The Secret Garden was written in 1911, and is an enduring children’s classic. This film is PG, not U. It’s so enduring that when I used to talk on grading classics stories for English as A Foreign Language students, I analysed four (of the very many) ELT adaptations of the book.

Don’t see this a kiddie film. It will hold adult attention, for the gorgeous look of it if nothing else. It’s the same production company as Harry Potter and Paddington. i.e. it’s a major movie. The Special Effects are mainly superb. The gardens are incredible. The scale is wildly larger than I ever imagined from the book, and while I thought of a small walled garden next to the house, this one covers acres.

Not surprisingly, as it was filmed in a variety of gardens ranging from Cornwall to Wiltshire to Gloucestershire to North Wales to Yorkshire. The house was in Grantham, Lincolnshire. Continuity must have been a nightmare as they walk from one to another. For the young actors especially, the complexity of filming three or four scenes in one location ranging from early in the film to late in the film must have been taxing. Original filming was 2018, so there was a lot of post-production. Mainly, 2020’s delay was pandemic watching, until like everyone else they gave up and let it out in September. The DVD was early October, and straight on to Sky.

Having watched both the 2020 and 1940 Rebecca this week, there are a remarkable number of parallels with the 2020 version of The Secret Garden especially. The house, Misselthwaite Manor, has been upscaled massively beyond our imagination, as have the grounds. There are miles of long corridors to walk through. There are beautiful rooms, murals along every corridor wall. Several geographically distant locations are combined to create the whole. Our central figure has not been invited to explore the whole and is obsessed with the bits she hasn’t seen. There’s a negative disapproving housekeeper who dislikes our heroine and who plots to get rid of her (less violently here). There’s an enigmatic male house owner. Mary sees people who might be ghosts or visions. The whole thing ends with a massive fire burning the place down. One could add that all of them echo Jane Eyre.

This one states that it’s 1947. Mary has been sent to live with her uncle after her parents died in India, and the house had been commandeered as a Second World War hospital, though there is a surprising absence of graffiti or Kilroys on the walls. Given that the original was published in 1911, we can already see a shift. Karen was adamant that the clothes look Edwardian at best, so it’s more likely to be World War One. The 1947 must be correct, because that’s the date of the cars we see. 1947 also ties in with the chaos of the partition of India at the start.

Mr Craven is mourning his dead wife, Grace. She was twin sister to Mary’s mother. The house is run by Mrs Medlock, the fierce housekeeper (JulieWalters). Martha is the servant who has to light Mary’s fires and help her. She tells Mary about her brother, Dickon, out on the moor.

Never act with dogs or children

That’s the old theatrical and film adage. You get both here.

Full marks for Julie Walters and Colin Firth for daring. Not only that, Colin Firth had previous – he did it before in the same role in 1987. Note that both were in Mamma Mia in 2008.

All three kids are completely believable, no sign of child actor woodenness at all. We felt that Dixie Egerickx’s Mary was influenced in the producers’ minds by Philip Pullman’s Lyra Belacqua in His Dark Materials.

The dog? Either brilliantly trained or somewhat SFX assisted in places. I’m not sure. I have filmed with trained dogs and they are extremely able, but I’d guess here it must be SFX assisted.

My only criticism around this point is the fat robin. Like the house, it’s oversized. It is in the original, it does point the way to the key. It stands out here as an effect, almost to the point where I expected to see a clockwork key sticking out of its back. The butterflies landing on Mary are creaky too.

It’s such a well-known tale that I won’t drag you through the plot, and it’s better half-remembered. Jack Thorne has not so much adapted as rewritten, letting his imagination fly from the original tale. The crabby old gardener, Ben Weatherstaff, has gone. Martha and Dickon’s sweet mother, Mrs Sowerby? Gone. The doctor who insists Colin is an invalid about to die? Gone. Mr Craven is no longer away travelling in Europe to be surprised by events on return. The hiding away and secretly spiriting Colin in his wheelchair to the garden is new. The dramatic ending with the fire and Mary’s heroics are not in the book.

The original does have that line ‘Do you believe in magic?’ and the script flies from there. This new Mary is an empath – she knows how to heal Colin in the garden, using the water.

She sees the flashbacks to the twin sisters … her mother and Colin’s mother. They manifest from the past before her eyes. The script also goes much deeper into the psychology of Mr Craven treating his son as a hunchbacked invalid, and into the psychological trauma of Colin trying to believe he CAN move.

Give it a go. It’s a visual feast. The main adults, Colin Firth, Julie Walters and Isis Davis are outstanding, as are all three kids.