The Secret Garden is an enjoyable journey whose payoff is emotionally riveting. Based on the 1911 book of the same name by Frances Hodgson Burnett, the film stars Dixie Egerickx as Mary Lenox, Colin Firth as Lord Archibald Craven, Julie Walters as Mrs. Medlock and Amir Wilson as Craven’s son Colin Craven. Mary’s parents die somewhere near the border of India/Pakistan where they had been dispatched by the UK government after World War II as India and Pakistan are starting their Partition. Many ex-pats were displaced during the conflicts between local parties and the Brits. One of them was Mary, who found herself without her parents and on her way to a massive English estate to live with her uncle.
As soon as she arrives, the figurative ghosts of the enormous mansion seem to haunt Mary. She swears she hears wails and cries in the night and she soon learns that her cousin, Colin, lives upstairs from her room and he is confined to his bed with an illness. His father, Lord Archibald, has been having issues himself, mostly psychological and some physical (he has a hunchback), that have impaired him from any kind of growth as a human being, much less a relationship with his son. He believes that his boy has the same ailment that killed his wife. Meanwhile, Mary’s parents have perished too, and it is the first thing that bonds Colin and Mary. It’s a rough connection, but as each feels the other out, it grows into a supportive and endearing cousin connection.
Egerickx owns the movie for the first act and it is her introduction into the different aspects of the house and those who work there and live there, are met. After years in East Asia, she is used to servants, so when she first asks Martha, her maid at Misselthwaite Manor. But she is no servant! Martha (Isis Davis) slowly adjusts to life at the manor but finds enjoyment outside on her own, when she runs into a stray dog, who leads her to The Secret Garden. Along the way, Martha’s son Dickon (Amir Wilson) joins in on the fun and the two have the most magical of times at the Garden, but keep it secret to themselves. There is something about this dog as if he is fate—even though Mary initially thought he was a she and called her Jemima.
In The Secret Garden, there is something more to this gorgeous and lush locale than flowers, a small lake, and nature that seems to live and breathe to elevate the youngsters’ experience. A robin, for example, greets Mary as she first comes in the driveway from her travels and is the first thing that turns that frown upside down.
The young actress is a find and she had to be due to the fact that she literally carries every scene, except for some flashbacks involving Colin and Mary’s mothers—who were sisters. It is the journey into the past in Burnett’s novel that enriched the pages and as it is used in the film, it fills in narrative blanks in a powerful and extremely profound way. For a while, there’s an upspoken connection between these children and their late mothers. Yet with all the dark and dire landscape surrounding them at the estate, those memories are meant to be buried. One of the great lessons of The Secret Garden is how it firmly states that even if you are done with the past, the past is never done with you.
Firth is fantastic. He plays against type. There is nothing dashing about his Noblemen, he is… one would say, cowardly, in how he approaches his son and how he handles the loss of his beloved. There are parts of the manor that art closed off that Mary finds her way into and the reason for their closure is because of their connection to Colin’s mother. He, stuck in his room, and his father too timid and in mourning to even open his son’s door to check on the kid who is confined to a bed. As the Oscar winner plays it, we never feel disdain for him. If anything, there is an inherent belief by the viewer that this man has it in him to be a good father, a good uncle, and a good lord of the manor. Something is holding him back, and it’s crippling.
Director Marc Munden has interwoven tapestries of pure beauty that also have an emotively rich core that will stick with you long after those credits roll. The way he has framed Burnett’s novel is a love letter to the source material. Those who adored the book will treasure this latest endeavor cinematically. Munden gets the most out of his cast and his supporting players, here we mean the composer Dario Marianelli, countless special effects artists, the production designer, and their team, as well as the sublime costume design by Michele Clapton.
The cinematography by Lol Crawley is exquisite. Although, it’s hard not to be able to capture the beauty of this garden! But one is also simultaneously awestruck by the majesty of the estate building—however, in disrepair it appears—and the vast landscape of the entire property. It is stunning, and so too is this film.
Grade: A-