It's a fantasy film over the fantasy and the imagination, but showing realities of children mistreatment and cruelty that in the real world are truly worse than those exposed (maybe more outside of U.S.A. and certainly exists in the third world, including India).
Alfonso Cuarón (`Y tu mamá también'), showed us in this film a masterful domain of the dramatic conduction combined with an excellent photography and a first-rate edition job.
For example, a deserving scene is when Sara (Liesel Matthews) wakes up and starts getting up to find the transformation of the rickety attic in a marvelous environment just made with cloths, fruits, food and incense with Hindu reminiscent. It's a fast sequence of five different shots which emphasizes the magic moment for the girl. The astonishing surprise relaxes the magic to a real world that can be good, just with the appearance of the little monkey of the Hindu servant Ram Dass (Errol Sitahal), showing to us that he, in some way, transformed the attic in the meanwhile sleep of the two girls.
Another exceptional, but very simple made scene, is when Miss Minchin (Eleanor Bron), in a crude way informs Sara that her father, an English captain of the British army, died in the war some weeks ago, and the British government confiscated all his properties, leaving her in misery. At the same time that the speech occurs, a black balloon slowly displaces floating near, exploding at the very moment in when she says that she's completely alone in the world, symbolizing that her fantasies are dead and must face the crude reality.
It's interesting to note that the hero of her fantastic stories, Prince Rama, is her own father in the movie (Liam Cunningham) and the heroin, Princess Sita (Alison Moir), is her mother, who died some years ago.
The interpretation of all the actors its extremely well directed and performed but the roll of Miss Minchin (Eleanor Bron) is remarkable.
It's not a movie about a false expectance; it's a movie about fantasies and the necessities to have a hope in the future, being able to dream and therefore make plans. (Remember `La Vita è bella' from Roberto Benigni).
Sorry for my English grammar, but is very difficult for me to express my thoughts in a different language than my native one.
Alfonso Cuarón (`Y tu mamá también'), showed us in this film a masterful domain of the dramatic conduction combined with an excellent photography and a first-rate edition job.
For example, a deserving scene is when Sara (Liesel Matthews) wakes up and starts getting up to find the transformation of the rickety attic in a marvelous environment just made with cloths, fruits, food and incense with Hindu reminiscent. It's a fast sequence of five different shots which emphasizes the magic moment for the girl. The astonishing surprise relaxes the magic to a real world that can be good, just with the appearance of the little monkey of the Hindu servant Ram Dass (Errol Sitahal), showing to us that he, in some way, transformed the attic in the meanwhile sleep of the two girls.
Another exceptional, but very simple made scene, is when Miss Minchin (Eleanor Bron), in a crude way informs Sara that her father, an English captain of the British army, died in the war some weeks ago, and the British government confiscated all his properties, leaving her in misery. At the same time that the speech occurs, a black balloon slowly displaces floating near, exploding at the very moment in when she says that she's completely alone in the world, symbolizing that her fantasies are dead and must face the crude reality.
It's interesting to note that the hero of her fantastic stories, Prince Rama, is her own father in the movie (Liam Cunningham) and the heroin, Princess Sita (Alison Moir), is her mother, who died some years ago.
The interpretation of all the actors its extremely well directed and performed but the roll of Miss Minchin (Eleanor Bron) is remarkable.
It's not a movie about a false expectance; it's a movie about fantasies and the necessities to have a hope in the future, being able to dream and therefore make plans. (Remember `La Vita è bella' from Roberto Benigni).
Sorry for my English grammar, but is very difficult for me to express my thoughts in a different language than my native one.