The Secret Garden | Review
Garden of Earthly Dismay: Munden Makes Burnett Mundane in Lifeless Remake
There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away, and certainly when said book’s imaginative pleasures are reduced to generic displays of CGI and characters reduced to platitudinous shadows. Such is the case with the latest adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic children’s novel The Secret Garden, originally published in 1911 and has been made into film versions several times over the past century, most notably by Agnieszka Holland in the Francis Ford Coppola produced 1993 production.
The latest attempt at remounting Burnett’s text is directed by Marc Munden, a prolific British television director who dips into narrative cinema every now and then (such as with the 2002 indie drama Miranda, which featured Christina Ricci and Kyle MacLachlen). This latest version isn’t likely to reinvigorate an interest in Burnett’s previous adaptations or her prose with what amounts to a pileup of tedious approximations and clichés of her characters and themes.
The most notable of Burnett’s trio of timeless texts (the others being Little Lord Fauntleroy and A Little Princess) generated a reexamination of the author in the 1990s, with Alfonso Cuaron adapting A Little Princess in 1995 (usurping the previous 1939 version, which featured Shirley Temple). But much like the CGI butchery exacted upon Lewis Carroll by Tim Burton with 2010’s Alice in Wonderland, the magic and wonder of the narrative are completely drained. It doesn’t help the human component is completely absent, either.
As Mary, Dixie Egerickx (who can currently be seen in a similar role in Jessica Swale’s Summerland) is written as a spoiled brat, and the trauma of losing her parents seemingly not factored in to her characterization (in previous versions and the novel, it was important to note Mary, though wealthy, had a toxic relationship with her parents, something vaguely attenuated in delirious flashbacks). Likewise, Colin Firth as Craven is hardly the mangled human he’s described to be, while Julie Walters is completely wasted as Mrs. Medford, especially considering this role netted Maggie Smith a BAFTA nod nearly thirty years ago.
This version of the narrative is scripted by Jack Thorne, whose recent forays into period, including The Aeronauts and Radioactive, prove a decided inability to tap into the minds and hearts of his subjects either as objects of intimacy or general interest.
½/☆☆☆☆☆
