The Secret Garden 1993
The Secret Garden 1993
G | 1h 41min | Drama, Family, Fantasy | 13 August 1993 (USA)
Storyline:
Living in India, Mary Lennox, a young, privileged girl, is left orphaned when her parents are killed in an earthquake. She is sent back to England where she goes to live on her uncle’s estate. It is a fairly isolated existence and she has to find things to keep herself occupied. She finds a sickly young boy…and a secret garden.
User review:
This movie is an utter delight to watch. I have probably seen it a dozen times, and I never get tired of it. Everything about it is perfect: it’s well-directed, well-acted, beautifully filmed, has great music, and the script and story are wonderful.
Agneiszka Holland does an outstanding job directing this film. Each character is separate and unique; each one has little personality quirks that makes it seem real. Just about every scene in the movie includes children, animals, or both — which must have been a nightmare to coordinate. Ms. Holland pulls it off without a hitch. Everything melds perfectly, and we are transported to a distant place and time, and fall in love with real, human characters.
The primary three characters in this story — Mary Lennox, Colin Craven, and Dickon — are all children, played by actors who are around 10 years old. Ordinarily having one child in a movie is difficult enough, but again, somehow they pull it off. All three kids — especially Kate Maberly — do a fine job of acting, and they are quite credible. Kate is simply divine as Mary Lennox, and Heydon Prowse was a good counter-point to her as Colin.
The story is touching and charming, and I think you’d have to be almost inhuman not to have a tear in your eye by the end of it. I absolutely fell in love with these children, and came to care very much about their characters. The “secret garden” really does seem to be a magical place (and I will say no more about it, since otherwise that would spoil things), and at the end I found myself wishing I could go and visit it first-hand. The accompanying music is wonderful — I find myself humming it for days and days after watching it.
In short, everything comes together to make this film a masterpiece. It is easily one of the 10 or 12 best movies ever made, perhaps *the* best movie ever made. I love it so much that I went out and bought the DVD of it, even though I’d seen it 8 or 10 times already. If you have not seen it I give it my highest possible recommendation.
Director: Agnieszka Holland
Writers: Frances Hodgson Burnett (book), Caroline Thompson (screenplay)
Stars: Kate Maberly, Maggie Smith, Heydon Prowse
Country: USA
Language: English
Release Date: 13 August 1993 (USA)
Also Known As: A titkok kertje
Filming Locations: Conistone Moor near Grassington, Yorkshire
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108071/
Format : MPEG-4
Format profile : Base Media
Codec ID : isom (isom/iso2/mp41)
File size : 1.58 GiB
Duration : 1 h 41 min
Overall bit rate : 2 230 kb/s
Better copy added
Although many consider the 1949 MGM part Technicolor version of “The Secret Garden”, with Dean Stockwell and Margaret O’Brien as the definitive one, in truth, all versions made so far have been equally excellent, including the 1993 version reviewed here. The secret of it’s success as both feature films and television series is that the story itself is so good that it would take a very incompetent cast and director to make a mess of it. So far, that hasn’t happened.