The morality is impeccable. The stick-in-the-mud mum and dad are respected and honoured. Ah ... there are animals that wear clothes, and as I vaguely recall hearing that CS Lewis has been denounced in some quarters as satanic because he has talking animals, that may not do.
Anyway, Miss Potter. Beatrix Potter was the kind of author that should not be allowed. She swanned into authoring without the slightest idea of how it’s done and made becoming an overnight success look easy. Renée Zellweger is the kind of actress who shouldn’t be allowed. She’s from Texas and talks like a Southern belle in her native accent, yet plays an English Victorian spinster to perfection. So the two are really meant for each other. And the love of her life is played by Ewan McGregor, another fake English accent thrown seamlessly into the mix.
Some may say proto-feminist. Some may say benign and harmless schizophrenic – or that could just be the way the movie shows her actually seeing her painted animals moving around her. But she was clearly a remarkable woman – proto-scientist and environmentalist; talented artist; single and happy with it at 36! (gasp) – and the film gets her very nicely.
It was fun watching colour printing in a day when you couldn’t just adjust Saturation and Hue in Photoshop. You had to re-ink the presses instead. And what also helped me with the movie was that Beatrix and the men in her life were all too old to be called up for WW1. I find it hard watching any late Victorian or Edwardian setting without feeling depressed at the knowledge that in ten years time they will all go to the Western Front and probably die ...
Yes, I enjoyed the film very much too.
ReplyDeleteThat's one i'm going to have to look into...
ReplyDelete