I find myself thinking that Matilda found a person with whom she could safely be a child (Ari's description of the ending montage sticks with me particularly)
Yes. And that's pretty much explicit in the vo - "Matilda discovered something she'd never known before - life could be fun. And she decided to have as much of it as possible." I think at the same time, Miss Honey experiences it as a second childhood and she encourages Matilda to have all the fun she never got to have as an actual child.
(I know at the end of the book we have Matilda finally finding sufficiently challenging material into which to channel her energies,
I'm not going to mention how the way this changes from book to movie infuriates me. Nope.
but I don't recall ever seeing Miss Honey depicted as particularly intellectual; )
This is a good point. I think Miss Honey is heaps smarter than anyone else in the film except Matilda, but that's really not saying much (and again, the Trunchbull isn't neccessarily stupid, just mean). She does read lots, and besides the Dickens moment, there's the two of them reading Moby-Dick in the last scene - and it just occured to me that it's Matilda who reads to Miss Honey and not the other way around and how that just enforces how very *not* parent-child they are.
In both book and film, Matilda does have same-age friends as well, and they aren't intellectual peers but satisfy other needs, which is nice.
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Date: 2006-02-08 10:10 pm (UTC)Yes. And that's pretty much explicit in the vo - "Matilda discovered something she'd never known before - life could be fun. And she decided to have as much of it as possible." I think at the same time, Miss Honey experiences it as a second childhood and she encourages Matilda to have all the fun she never got to have as an actual child.
(I know at the end of the book we have Matilda finally finding sufficiently challenging material into which to channel her energies,
I'm not going to mention how the way this changes from book to movie infuriates me. Nope.
but I don't recall ever seeing Miss Honey depicted as particularly intellectual; )
This is a good point. I think Miss Honey is heaps smarter than anyone else in the film except Matilda, but that's really not saying much (and again, the Trunchbull isn't neccessarily stupid, just mean). She does read lots, and besides the Dickens moment, there's the two of them reading Moby-Dick in the last scene - and it just occured to me that it's Matilda who reads to Miss Honey and not the other way around and how that just enforces how very *not* parent-child they are.
In both book and film, Matilda does have same-age friends as well, and they aren't intellectual peers but satisfy other needs, which is nice.