The Secret Garden

Marc Munden’s The Secret Gar­den, an adap­ta­tion of Frances Hodg­son Burnett’s 1911 nov­el of the same name, is beau­ti­ful to look at. But while the film will charm your sens­es it won’t nec­es­sar­i­ly cap­ti­vate your soul.

One evening dur­ing the Indo-Pak­istani war of 1947 – 48, a young girl nar­rates a tale to her doll in the bed­room of her family’s grand res­i­dence. A com­mo­tion can sud­den­ly be heard beyond the door; the girl is afraid but con­tin­ues her tale. Mary Lennox (Dix­ie Egerickx) awakes the next morn­ing, aban­doned in a pil­laged home, left to fend for herself.

Lat­er dis­cov­ered by the author­i­ties, mal­nour­ished and in a state of neglect, orphaned Mary is sent to Eng­land to live with her wid­owed uncle, Archibald Craven (Col­in Firth). Accus­tomed to a par­tic­u­lar lifestyle that has left Mary spoilt and cos­set­ed, she is not used to her move­ments being restrict­ed and reg­i­ment­ed when she arrives at Mis­selth­waite Manor. She soon breaks the rules, unearthing Craven’s buried secrets in the process.

Visu­al­ly, this film is a delight, par­tic­u­lar­ly the flash­backs to Mary’s life in colo­nial India which exude a dream­like qual­i­ty. Warm, sun-kissed colours fill the screen dur­ing these sequences and jux­ta­pose Misselthwaite’s cold­ness. Visu­al effects pro­vide a seam­less tran­si­tion between past and present, as well as lend­ing them­selves to the film’s note of child­like won­der­ment and imag­i­na­tion. Dario Marianelli’s score per­fect­ly accents this enchant­ment; the soft sound of bells lingers.

These flash­backs are also tinged with sad­ness, as we’re shown Mary repeat­ed­ly being ignored by her with­drawn moth­er. Unlike in the nov­el, where Mary’s par­ents are whol­ly neglect­ful and tak­en by cholera, Munden’s film implies that while Mary’s father was some­what present, her mother’s dis­tant dis­po­si­tion was in fact due to the on-set of depres­sion fol­low­ing the loss of her sis­ter, Craven’s late wife. The Secret Gar­den deals fre­quent­ly with loss and depres­sion, and it’s refresh­ing to see a fam­i­ly film con­cern itself with men­tal health.

Anoth­er high point is Egerickx’s superb por­tray­al of Lennox, the film’s inso­lent pro­tag­o­nist. Egerickx is a lit­tle awk­ward at first, but she quick­ly proves her­self as one to watch. The sub­tle­ty with which she allows emo­tion to devel­op as it cross­es her face is excep­tion­al. She is by far the most engag­ing char­ac­ter. Unfor­tu­nate­ly the same can­not be said for the rest of the cast, who appear vis­i­bly inhib­it­ed by the script.