El jardín secreto

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.

A young girl in the 1940's has to go and live with a distant uncle she doesn't know and she finds a secret garden and some friends.

This starts of very bleak. The only comparison I can think of for this level of isolation, loneliness and alienation is "28 Days Later." The film carries on like this for a while and we get to know the unhappy lead character rather well.

As little girls in the 1940's, stuck in dusty manors in the middle of the moors don't really get up to much the film feels very, very slow and voyeuristic at times.

You get shots of fingers brushing leaves, shoes stamping in puddles, misty moorland, overcast skies, etc.

Then the movie has to put its foot down to get the actual story underway. All that time defining this disturbed, distant little girl is erased in an instant when she suddenly realises that her mum did love her and she transforms into Pollyanna overnight. She then runs around the estate marking off her check list of people to fix.

After an hour and a quarter of gloom and depression the last fifteen minutes are just too cloying. It is like being punched in the throat by a fist made of sweetener.

The young actors are very good. Colin Firth, Julie Walters and Isis Davis are only there for set dressing. The garden is vibrant and bright but not really a garden and no distinction is made between fantasy and reality so you never really get a handle on what it is.

This is a short film that feels long and leaves you struggling to remember what you just watched.

This is an enjoyable film but if you are expecting a film of the book you won't get it. It begins accurately enough but segues into pure fantasy. The secret garden, which should be a walled garden of ordinary size becomes a massive acreage. The whole point is that the garden is neglected and Mary's story is about rescuing the garden, tending it with Dickon, learning to sow and grow plants and through the garden saving Colin and herself. That was all lost here with the garden some sort of Eden that would be most unlikely in Yorkshire and totally unrealistic. Why make a film of a book and then completely ignore the book? Disappointing.

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.

Not much happens in the film, and the characters are rather flat and dull. The colour scheme is beautiful, but it doesn't save the film from being a bore. I'm not the target demographic, so I thought it was pretty but boring.