Reimagined classic The Secret Garden hits the mark with fresh effects and British screen icons

At the heart of British-American author Frances Hodgson Burnett’s beloved children’s book, The Secret Garden, is the idea that the power of a child’s imagination is a truly wondrous thing. This simple idea, which manifests in the book as a magical garden with healing properties, has captured the imaginations of many adults, as well as countless kids, since it was first published in 1911. Adults such as iconic filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, who produced one of a number of adaptations of the book that have appeared over the past century. The first, in 1919, starred Lila Lee, one of the top actresses of the silent era, while another in 1949 featured prolific child actor of the time Margaret O'Brien, and a very young Dean Stockwell, who would go on to earn an Academy Award nomination for his performance in Married to the Mob nearly four decades later. Coppola’s version arrived in 1993, with Dame Maggie Smith headlining the cast, a there has also been a Broadway musical version and four separate adaptations for TV. So, the latest reboot, with director Marc Munden at the helm (he earned considerable acclaim directing Robbie Coltrane in the British TV series National Treasure), would seem to be treading a pretty well-worn path. But, thanks to improvements in CGI effects, and a cast that includes British screen icons Colin Firth and Julie Walters, the newest Secret Garden still has something fresh to offer. Firth and Walters aside, much of the aforementioned freshness comes from the far less well-known Dixie Egerickx, who Munden cast in the central role of Mary. The movie opens with a 10-year-old Mary in post-WWII British India, recently orphaned and coming to terms with the prospect of being relocated to England to live in the cold manor house of an even colder uncle (Firth) she’s never met. “I think she’s quite complex,” Egerickx says of her character. “Obviously, initially, she’s not very nice at all, unlikeable, defiant, but, the thing is, it’s just because she’s lonely and she doesn’t really have anyone, and the cool thing about the film is, as it develops and she develops, you begin to see why she is the way she is, and by the end she’s quite kind and caring.” Firth’s character, Lord Craven, remains unlikeable for the vast majority of the film, a bit like Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, minus the roguish charm and penchant for wet shirts. Walters, as Lord Craven’s crotchety servant, Mrs Medlock, also plays a character that is hard to warm to, but Egerickx says these acting greats were far from cold when the cameras stopped rolling. “Not at all, it was amazing, they were both so inspirational and, generally, just really, really lovely people, and I learned a lot from them just from watching them play their roles,” Egerickx says. Egerickx, now 15, won the role after a lengthy audition process, beating hundreds of kids to secure the gig, which sees her appear in nearly every scene, including a fiery climatic sequence. “The fire scenes at the end were really, really intense because we did actually use real fire, and it made the process more real and it made it much easier to act scared,” she says. The young actor thinks her movie hits cinemas at just the right time, as the world desperately needs the escapism it offers. Escapism that she would’ve benefited from this year as a housebound London kid in a country where schooling has mostly been online due to COVID. “Can’t say I’ve loved it, it was alright, I mean at least I learnt something and it gave me something to do,” she said of her online lessons. “It was nice to be able to sit in bed and not have to get up really early and get on the Tube and everything but, on the flipside, I really missed my friends.” Schools reopened in the UK this month but it will be some time before anything close to normality returns to that part of the world. For WA kids, on the other hand, the pandemic might as well be happening on another planet, and the biggest concern for parents over here is the looming dilemma of how to fill the school holidays. So, while we might not technically need the escapism of The Secret Garden as much as some other places around the world right now, the film does provide a solid option if you’re looking to entertain the rug rats at the multiplex over the holidays. The Secret Garden is in cinemas now.