El jardín secreto

It seems roughly every 7 years someone makes another adaptation, this is still a fine movie but how many more versions do we need, get a life. Are all the writers, producers and directors of today braindead unimaginative slugs without any new Ideas that they have to constantly remake already well known popular films. Time for a new generation of creative, imaginative and original movie makers to arise and take over .

The Secret Garden (2020) is a movie of two halves. The first half verges on excellent, with some creative and beautiful CGI used to represent Mary's imagination. The scenes in the chaos of golden, dusty India followed by the bleak grey of England are harrowing in different ways.

It starts so well: how could it finish so badly?

About half way through the whole thing devolves into a car crash of overblown CGI Disney schmaltz. Suddenly dream/imagination sequences are "real", there are ghosts, there's a bizarre attempt to create a mystery where there's no mystery in the book nor a need for one (isn't the Garden enough?) and weird themes of mental illness and maternal abandonment that simply don't add anything. That these children are orphaned is surely enough?

The child actress who plays Mary, Dixie Egerickx (she'll be spelling out that surname all her life) is superb. She has an "intelligent stillness" that sets her apart. I don't doubt she will go very far, and probably end up a Dame if she sticks with acting. She's very watchable.

Julie Walters is excellent as Mrs Medlock, but then she's always excellent! Isis Davis as Martha is also very enjoyable. Amir Wilson isn't given much of a role as her brother Dickon (I recall it as a larger, more interesting role in the book and other productions). Even in Midsummer when Mary's winter coat has changed to a light skirt and blouse, he appears to be wearing the same padded sack. Edan Hayhurst playing Colin is quite good.

And Colin Firth: poor Colin Firth. In this production he's given a hunchback and ultimately turned into Mrs Danvers, staggering through a burning house with a face like doom - why show us those beautiful frescoes/murals one moment if only to burn them to pieces the next? - while his beloved dead wife's preserved possessions are consumed by the flames. What an absurd ending: Mary and her uncle would have been unconscious within seconds from the heat and flames, but their escape goes on and on and on.

I was left wondering why I had gone to see The Secret Garden but emerged from a surreal production of Rebecca.

I nearly didn't watch it because of the awful reviews on this site. I"m glad I have learned to use my own discrepancy . I've seen all the original films and read the book. So I had an idea what to expect. I wanted a bit of fantasy and escapism. The Secret garden is comforting and familiar territory . Beautiful scenery, good acting nice familiar storyline. it was exactly what I needed during this miserable Covid-19 time. Please ignore the ridiculously negative reviews and snuggle down and with it for yourself.

Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel is charming. This movie is a bloated melodrama. 1. Just because you can use CGI doesn't mean you have to. 2. Who needs all the ancillary backstory(ies) that aren't in the novel, and serve no useful narrative purpose. 3. In this film, the secret garden - which is, in the novel, a secret garden - is about the size of the county of Cornwall in England, and full of all sorts of exotic plants that are not in the garden in the novel. In the novel, the children gain agency in their lives by learning to take care of the secret garden, and bring order into a place that has been abandoned and left to go wild (as, in some respects, two of the children have been left uncared-for) - this is sort of the whole point of the story. It would take an army of professional gardeners months if not years to maintain the garden in this film. Read the book, watch the earlier movie. Miss this one.

As the movie starts it is 1947 and a small British girl and her family are living well in India. Then when both parents die, newly orphaned she is sent to her wealthy uncle's estate in England. Not sure what age she was supposed to be, the actress was 12 during filming.

She has led a privileged life and at first is difficult in her new surroundings. Then wandering around the large estate encounters a dog, she feeds it the meat from her sandwich, soon the two are looking for each other each day.

Then the dog takes her to a place surrounded by a tall, old wall overgrown with various vegetation, she climbs and inside finds a wonderous, somewhat magical garden, the "secret garden" of the title. Further investigation reveals it was a favorite getaway for her mother and aunt.

She also discovers she has a cousin living in the same big house, a boy mostly bed-bound. Then she meets a local boy out at the garden, eventually the three of them explore together.

All of them, and including the dad, had healings that were needed, the friendships and perhaps some of the magic of the garden help all of them.

Good movie, my wife and I watched it at home on DVD from our public library. Watching the extras on the disc, for the filming in the secret garden they actually used a number of the best gardens in the UK for sites and stitched them together for the film to seem like it was all at one place.