When her father enlists to fight for the British in WWI, young Sara Crewe goes to New York to attend the same boarding school her late mother attended. She soon clashes with the severe headmistress, Miss Minchin, who attempts to stifle Sara's creativity and sense of self-worth.
Rated 3.8 / 5 from 3 logs on Katalog
bruh to be rich, experience being poor for a day, then rich again, is WAY better than vice versa
I see why they wanted Cuarón to direct a Harry Potter movie after this: you got your boarding school with magic and questionable safety standards, a rich popular orphan, a Snape, a Malfoy and a whole bunch of people of colour with questionable contributions to the story. And likewise, if you can ignore everything you know as an adult, it’s quite cute and cozy and Christmassy. Special mention to little Lottie, that child was hilarious.✨Every girl is a princess, from riches to rags to riches ✨
I really do like this film. It’s shot with storybook tempo, sweet without being cloying, and boasts a talented stable of child actors — the little bully girl is a particular delight. The villainess, meanwhile, is played with such manic repression you can tell she’s never more than one bad dream away from a final breakdown. She hints at a private melodrama the script withholds. What was her education like? Was she in love with Captain Crewe? What was her relationship with her father? I yearn for a prequel, or at least a fix-it fanfic. The plot too overflows with charm: a children’s tale with a backbone. Sara is plucky, resilient, and, to borrow from George R.R. Martin, unbent, unbowed, unbroken — and with a heart of gold to boot. So far, enchanting. But here’s the thing: I’m an overthinker. I’m not proud of it, but it’s there. And a fact is: Sara’s father is British, the year is 1912, and he made his fortune in India. The film makes quite a show of her dazzling wealth — so dazzling it supplies the title itself, A Little Princess. And that does complicate matters, doesn’t it? One can’t help but wonder what might have happened had Sara returned to India after the war. In 1918 she would have found a country drained to feed Britain’s war machine, Indian troops shipped abroad while shortages at home deepened into famine. By 1919 she would have witnessed the Amritsar massacre, hundreds of civilians gunned down in a public garden. By 1920, she would have lived in a land seething with unrest — Gandhi calling for non-cooperation, peasants refusing taxes, students walking out of colonial schools. What position would she and her father have taken? Loyal servants of the Raj, keeping to their segregated clubs and drawing rooms? And this, of course, is the sleight of hand the story performs. India exists only as a stage direction: Captain Crewe’s fortune there is an aside, forgotten once he decamps to New York. Imagine the same plot written a little differently: a kindly gentleman, fabulously rich from a Louisiana cotton plantation worked by enslaved labourers, who then relocates to Japan — and whose past is brushed aside with a cheery, “Oh, have you met this wealthy land owner? He’s such a wonderful father.” Would that have flown as a feel-good children’s film in 1995? Not a chance. But with India, somehow, it did. With all that said, not everything needs to be about politics and injustice and class struggle. It’s just—I mean. Why couldn’t they have made the dad American? The girl is American, she’s going to an American school, it would have been a 10/10 film.
