COURTESY OF STX FILMS.
It’s a given, in any adaptation of Frances Hogdon Burnett’s literary classic The Secret Garden, that we’ll watch a young English girl named Mary Lennox grow from a sickly, unloved yet spoiled terror, to a young woman of empathy and virtue. The idea is that the girl will flourish under actual care—not just catering-to.
Yet it’s still something of a surprise to meet the Mary of Marc Munden’s new adaptation, played by Dixie Egerickx. Her pallor, and Munden’s flashbacks to a time before tragedy befell Mary, tell us almost everything we need to know about how and why she is the way she is. Her parents are both dead, and their servants have all fled. (It’s colonial India; cholera has swept the country.) Mary has been shipped off to Misselthwaite Manor, in Yorkshire, to live with her mysterious widower uncle, Archibald Craven (Colin Firth). The house is spooky, seemingly childless, with nary any sunlight and a neglectful uncle completely sewn up in his own grief. It beats being abandoned in India, but it ain’t great.
Contact Information:
K. AUSTIN COLLINS
Tags:
, Wire, United States, English
Contact Information:
K. AUSTIN COLLINS
