Tom's Midnight Garden
USA/UK/Japan 1998
Reviewed by Philip Kemp
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
1958. When his brother Peter gets measles, 14-year-old Tom Long is sent to stay with his uncle and aunt in Ely. They live in a first-floor flat in what was once a grand manor house, now run down. One night Tom hears the old grandfather clock in the hallway strike 13. Creeping downstairs, he finds the house restored to its former glory, and outside stretches a huge sunlit garden.
On subsequent nights Tom explores the garden. The house's inhabitants, dressed in 1890s costume, can't see him and walk right through him. The only exceptions are Hatty, a lonely 12-year-old orphan despised by her aunt and cousins, and Abel the gardener, who regards Tom as an evil spirit. Tom befriends Hatty and they play together. But on each visit she's visibly older. When Hatty is 19 they visit Ely Cathedral together; but she's preoccupied with a suitor, and Tom fades from her sight. When he next seeks the garden, it's vanished.
Peter has recovered and Tom, heartbroken, prepares to return home. Summoned to visit the widowed landlady on the top floor, whom he has never seen, he discovers that she is Hatty, now grown old. She recounts her life, and tells him that the yew tree on which they carved their initials still stands, sole survivor of the garden. Many years later, married, Tom sees the old manor being demolished, then returns home to a nearby house in whose garden the tree is now situated.
Review
The idea of the secret garden, the hidden enchanted place that only those in the know can find, recurs repeatedly in children's literature. It's a potent image of fleeting, idealised childhood, Wordsworth's lost realm "of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower", and books that evoke something of its essence often become classics. In theory, so intensely visual an image should transfer well to film, but the camera has a way of rendering such evocative concepts a touch too literally. This was true of Agnieszka Holland's appealing version of Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden (1993), and it applies even more strongly to Tom's Midnight Garden, since the garden here is a more ethereal affair - part dream, part time-travel fantasy.
In his 1985 study of children's books, Secret Gardens, Humphrey Carpenter describes Philippa Pearce's novel (on which this film is based) as "a rewriting of Peter Pan from Peter's point of view". Tom's anguish in losing the garden and Hatty, his playmate, recalls Peter's fervent attempts to persuade Wendy to stay with him in never-never land, where she won't grow up. Tom and Hatty are on different time-scales: while only a few weeks elapse for him, she grows into a young woman, falls in love and passes out of his world. Or rather, he passes out of hers, becoming "thin" and finally vanishing from her sight. And the next time he tries to visit the garden it's gone, leaving only a grimy little yard filled with dustbins.
Apart from the superfluous present-day episodes that bookend the action, writer-director Willard Carroll (Playing by Heart) stays faithful to Pearce's original. But his film rarely captures the yearning sense of transience and loss that makes the novel so memorable. The problem is chiefly in the casting. Anthony Way was 14 at the time of filming but looks older, and seems too sturdy and mature for the vulnerable Tom. (Nick Robinson, briefly glimpsed as his younger brother Peter, might have been better casting for the lead.) Joan Plowright, as the aged Hatty, is no one's idea of a frail octogenarian, and James Wilby and Greta Scacchi, as Tom's uncle and aunt, seem uncomfortable in their roles. Most crucially, Carroll fumbles the moment when Tom, desperate to cling on to the vanishing past, resolves to "exchange time for eternity" and stay in the garden indefinitely - in effect, a death-wish.
The best moments in Tom's Midnight Garden are those when the past and present most closely impinge on each other, as when Tom slips between time zones only to find whole years have elapsed, or discovers Hatty's skates beneath the floor of the wardrobe, hidden there by her 60 years earlier just as he asked her to. Gavin Finney's photography neatly reverses expectations in contrasting the periods: the 50s sequences have a slightly soft-edged glow, while the Victorian episodes are crisp and sharp. And Debbie Wiseman's score captures the tone perfectly - limpid, lyrical, aching with nostalgia.
Credits
- Director
- Willard Carroll
- Producers
- Adam Shapiro
- Charles Salmon
- Tom Wilhite
- Screenplay
- Willard Carroll
- Based on the novel by
- Philippa Pearce
- Director of Photography
- Gavin Finney
- Editor
- Les Healey
- Production Designer
- James Merifield
- Music/Music Conductor
- Debbie Wiseman
- ©Easton Films Inc.
- Production Companies
- A Hyperion production
- in association with the Isle of Man Film Commission and BS24 (Japan)
- Produced in association with Isis Productions Ltd
- Executive Producers
- Marie Vine
- Yukio Sonoyama
- Co-producers
- Eva Redfern
- Nick De Grunwald
- Executive in Charge of Production
- Kurt Albrecht
- Production Co-ordinator
- Penny Perry
- Production Manager
- Kelly Howard-Garde
- Location Manager
- Casper Mill
- Assistant Directors
- John Watson
- Kate Hazell
- Matthew Penry-Davey
- Script Supervisor
- June Randall
- Casting
- Joyce Nettles
- Visual Effects
- Film Factory at VTR
- Matte Paintings
- Mission Control EFX
- Special Effects Supervisor
- Ken Lailey
- Art Director
- Justin Warburton-Brown
- Costume Designer
- Deirdre Clancy
- Wardrobe Supervisor
- Charlotte Bird
- Chief Make-up/Hair Artist
- RoseAnn Samuel
- Titles/Opticals
- General Screen Enterprises
- Orchestra Leader
- Perry Montague-Mason
- Score Orchestrations
- Debbie Wiseman
- Strings Co-ordinator
- Justin Pearson
- Music Recording
- Dick Lewzey
- Soundtrack
- "After Always" -Barbara Dickson, Miriam Stockley
- Sound Recording
- George Richards
- Dubbing Mixer
- Dave Humphries
- Sound Editor
- Kevin Brazier
- Dialogue Editor
- Roger Dobson
- Sound Effects Editor
- Steve Griffiths
- Foley
- Artists:
- John Fewell
- Julie Ankerson
- Mixer:
- Trevor Swanscott
- Cast
- Greta Scacchi
- Aunt Gwen
- James Wilby
- Uncle Alan
- Joan Plowright
- Mrs Bartholomew
- Anthony Way
- Tom Long
- David Bradley
- Abel
- Penelope Wilton
- Aunt Melbourne
- Nigel Le Vaillant
- Thomas Long
- Liz Smith
- Mrs Willows
- Florence Hoath
- young Hatty
- Caroline Carver
- Hatty
- Mel Martin
- Alice Long
- Serena Gordon
- Melody Long
- Marlene Sidaway
- Doris Schuster
- Alfie Lawrence
- Harriet Long
- Nick Robinson
- Peter Long
- Arlene Cockburn
- Susan the maid
- Tom Bowles
- Mr Ferguson
- Stuart Piper
- Hubert
- Guy Witcher
- Edgar
- Rory Jennings
- young James
- Laurel Melsom
- youngest Hatty
- Noah Huntley
- James
- Daniel Betts
- Barty
- Robert Putt
- tower keeper
- Arthur Cox
- Mr Batsford
- Certificate
- tbc
- Distributor
- Downtown Pictures
- tbc feet
- tbc minutes
- Dolby Digital
- Colour by
- Rank Film Laboratories