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A Little Princess · This Film is Lit

• 0:04
  Speaker A: This Film Is lit, the podcast where we finally settle the score on one simple Is the book really better than the movie? I'm Brian and I have a film degree, so I watch the movie but don't read the book.
• 0:15
  Speaker B: And I'm Katie, I have an English degree, so I do things the right way and read the book before we watch the movie.
• 0:22
  Speaker A: So prepare to be wowed by our expertise and charm as we dissect all of your favorite film adaptations and decide if the silver screen or the written word did it better. So turn it up, settle in, and get ready for spoilers because this film is lit all girls are Princesses. Even if they live in tiny old attics, even if they dress in rags, even if they aren't pretty or smart or young, they're still princesses. It's a little princess and this film is lit. Hello and welcome back to this Film Was Late, the podcast where we talk about movies that are based on books. We have a full episode with every single one of our segments, so we're going to jump right in. If you have not read or watched A Little Princess recently, we're gonna give you a summary in Let me sum up. Let me splay. No, there is too much. Let me sum up. This is a summary of the film sourced from Wikipedia. Spoilers abound. In 1914, a kind hearted young girl named Sarah Crewe lives in India with her widowed father Richard, a wealthy British army officer who shares her love for stories of myth and magic. Called in to serve in the Great War, Richard enrolls Sarah at an all girls boarding school in New York City that her late mother had attended, which is run by its hot and spiteful headmistress, Maria Minchin, and her kindly sister Amelia. Instructing Maria to spare no expense for his daughter's comfort, Richard furnishes the school's largest suite and leaves Sarah with a locket once owned by her mother and a doll named Emily, which he tells her will keep them connected through magic. Although stifled by Maria's strictness, Sarah becomes popular among the girls, including an African American scullery maid, Becky, for her kindness and powerful imagination. In her spare time, Sarah writes to her father, who is caught in a gas attack while trying to save a fellow soldier in the trenches. Hoping to extort more money from Richard, Maria throws Sarah a lavish birthday party, but Richard's solicitor arrives with news that he has been killed in battle. The British government has seized his assets, leaving Sarah penniless. Maria moves Sarah to the school's attic with Becky to work as a servant and confiscates her belongings, including the locket, allowing Sarah to keep only Emily and a book. Though her life is bleak, Sarah remains kind to others, but gets her revenge on Lavinia, a school bully. Charles Randolph, the school's elderly neighbor, receives word that his son John has been declared missing in action while fighting in Europe. Ramdas, Charles, Indy and the associate comes to notice Sarah from the neighboring attic, overhearing her imaginative stories. When a wounded soldier suffering from amnesia is misidentified as John, Ram Dass encourages Charles to take the man in. Meanwhile, Sarah's friends sneak into Maria's office and recover her locket, visiting Sarah that night to hear her tales of Prince Rama. After catching Sarah with the other girls, Maria pushes her and has Becky locked up in the attic for an entire day, punishes her and has Becky locked up in the attic for an entire day. However, Sarah stands up to Maria's cruelty with her father's belief that all girls or princesses, regardless of their lot in life. She later comforts Becky by imagining a feast and fine clothes for them, awakening to find that the dream has come true. With their attic secretly transformed by Ram Dass. Inspired by Sarah's kindness, Amelia runs away with a milkman and Maria soon discovers the locket is missing. Confronting Sarah in the attic, she accuses her of stealing the finery left by Ram Dass and viciously locks Sarah in her room while she summons the police. With Becky's help, Sarah narrowly escapes by making a perilous climb over to the Randolph house. As Maria and the police search for her, Sarah discovers that that her father Richard is the recovering soldier, but suffering from amnesia, he does not recognize her. Though Maria clearly recognizes Richard, she instead lies by callously saying that Sarah has no father. As Sarah is dragged away by the police, Ram Dass helps Richard regain his memory. Does he? He stands next to him outside. Richard saves Sarah and the two are happily reunited while Maria, defeated, angrily walks away. Sometime later, Charles has taken over the school and now a much happier place for the girls, and has found peace in knowing that Richard tried to save his son. Richard's fortune has been restored and he has adopted Becky as punishment for her file treatment of Sarah and the other girls. Maria is reduced to working for a young chimney sweep that she had mistreated earlier. Sarah gives Emily to the girls and shares an unexpected hug with Lavinia before she and Becky depart for home. That is your summary of a little princess. We do have a guess who this week, so let's go ahead and play that now. Who Are you no one of consequence? I must know. Get used to disappointment. Okay.
• 5:01
  Speaker B: Tall and dull and respectable and ugly. She had large, cold, fishy eyes and a large, cold, fishy smile. It spread itself into a very large smile when she saw them.
• 5:19
  Speaker A: I mean, I imagine this has to be Miss mentioned.
• 5:24
  Speaker B: Yeah, it is.
• 5:25
  Speaker A: Okay. I don't know who else I would have think that would be. So. Yeah. Ms. Minchin.
• 5:31
  Speaker B: She was a slim, supple creature, rather tall for her age, and had an intense, attractive little face. Her hair was heavy and quite black and only curled at the tips. Her eyes were greenish gray, it is true, but they were big, wonderful eyes with long black lashes.
• 5:51
  Speaker A: Um, this. I. I don't know. My guess would be maybe this is Becky. It's a weird description, but I don't, I don't. I. It could be any number of the girls there. I don't. It doesn't sound like the sister of Amelia, who's the sister of Ms. Minchin. At least not her character in the movie. And there's not really any other adult women characters in the movie. So I'm gonna say that this is Becky.
• 6:22
  Speaker B: It's actually Sarah.
• 6:24
  Speaker A: Oh, okay. I guess that makes sense. I. Yeah, I sure. I don't know. It's just a description of a. She doesn't really have dark hair in the movie.
• 6:34
  Speaker B: She has like dark blonde hair.
• 6:36
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 6:38
  Speaker B: She noticed very soon one little girl about her own age who looked at her very hard with a pair of light, rather dull blue eyes. She was a fat child who did not look as if she were in the least clever. But she had a good naturedly pouting mouth. Her flaxen hair was braided into a tight pigtail, tied in a ribbon.
• 7:01
  Speaker A: I literally have no idea. I mean, the good natured pouting mouth makes me think that it's a nice character. But then the first part of it makes me think it's a mean character, which made me. I initially thought that this was Lavinia, who was like the bully. But the good naturedly pouting mouth doesn't really make sense to me. But I'm still gonna say Lavinia.
• 7:24
  Speaker B: This is actually Ermengarde, the girl with the glasses.
• 7:28
  Speaker A: Who.
• 7:29
  Speaker B: Ermengarde.
• 7:31
  Speaker A: Is that her name?
• 7:33
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 7:33
  Speaker A: I don't remember them ever saying, yeah, I know, the little girl with the glasses. I don't remember them ever saying her name and that being her name, but.
• 7:39
  Speaker B: I promise that's her name.
• 7:41
  Speaker A: Fair enough. But that, that obviously. Yeah, that makes sense that that would.
• 7:44
  Speaker B: Be her last one. You're gonna get this one. It was the picturesque white swathed form and dark eyed, gleaming eyed, white turbaned head of a native Indian manservant.
• 7:58
  Speaker A: Dark faced, not dark eyed, but yes. I mean that's Ram Dass. Unless there's a different Indian manservant in the film or in the blog.
• 8:07
  Speaker B: Yeah, that is Ram Dass.
• 8:08
  Speaker A: Okay. Yeah, yeah, I could have got that third one that was very. I just forgot I didn't know that character's name. So I was like she's a kind of an, you know, she's one of the more like relevant child characters. I just didn't foolishly didn't think of her because I didn't know her name. So. Yeah, no, that makes sense. Most of those track pretty well, I think honestly. Sarah's is the. Is the least like accurate. The rest of them are actually pretty spot on to what they look like in the film. So. All right, I got some questions. Let's get into them. In. Was that in the book? Gaston?
• 8:42
  Speaker B: May I have my book please?
• 8:44
  Speaker A: How can you read this? There's no pictures.
• 8:46
  Speaker B: Well, some people use their imagination.
• 8:49
  Speaker A: So when we move, I'm going to skip forward quite a bit here and we get to the part where we see her father's taking her to the boarding school. He's being called away to war and he's dropping her off at this boarding school. And we see the boarding school in the film and it's this super cool like three or four story green brick building that is like super awesome looking. And I wanted to know if that felt like it was reflective of the book in the. Or the school in the book. Because specifically the green brick. Cause that's what makes it so unique. But it's a very cool looking building. Does that architecture of the building come from the book?
• 9:29
  Speaker B: So it is a large brick house, but it's not described as green. The description in the book is it was a big dull brick house exactly like all the others in its row. But on that front door they're shown a bright. A brass plate which was engraved with black letters. Ms. Minchin Select Seminary for Young Ladies. Sarah often thought afterward that the house was somehow exactly like Ms. Minchin. It was respectable and well furnished. But everything in it was ugly.
• 9:59
  Speaker A: Yeah, okay. Yeah, no, not really then because this, this one does not look like every other house on the row. It is very distinct. I do love it particularly in its color.
• 10:06
  Speaker B: Also want to know if that's a building that like exists somewhere or if this is a set.
• 10:12
  Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know because the street's definitely a set. I think I read somewhere because, like, all the. I think I'm, like, 99% sure the street is a set, because in all the buildings, like, all the stores we see, all the names of them and stuff are, like, producers and, like, people that worked on the movie and everything. So they built that street section there. Or maybe they didn't build the street section. Maybe it's a real street section. They just put all signs up. I thought I sounded like it was a studio and it was like a backlot. And they made that little street section, which would make sense because we only see that area of the street right there. So I wouldn't be surprised if the house was a set. But I don't know for sure. I didn't confirm that. I would have to go look. So we. Then we're introduced to Becky. We get into school. We're introduced to all the characters, but one of the first kids we see or one of the people we see pretty early on is Becky, who is the servant who lives in the attic. And she's a little black girl. And this is obviously World War I. What city are we in? Do we know?
• 11:09
  Speaker B: We're in New York.
• 11:10
  Speaker A: Okay, In New York City. And so obviously, racism alive and well at this time. But they. So she's not a student at the school. She's just a servant. And she's not allowed to talk to the other students. And at one point, Becky or Sarah asks about her to one of the other girls, like, oh, who's that? And they say, she's a servant girl and she has dark skin. And Sarah responds with, so. And the girl that she says it to doesn't. Says, doesn't that mean something? And they just, like. They're like, I don't know. And I thought that was a very funny interaction. I want to know if it came from the book, because I love that the idea that this girl is aware of racial prejudice but isn't really exactly sure why or what the. Like, you know what I mean is, like, clearly, like, doesn't understand and is not. Doesn't really even. Like, it's not, like, super indoctrinated into it, but just has, like, clearly heard people be like, well, they're black people. They're different than us, or whatever. She's like, doesn't that mean something? I don't know. But specifically that line. And then more generally, is there a, like, a black servant girl that works at the school that Sarah befriends?
• 12:19
  Speaker B: So Becky, the scullery Maid is a character in the book, and she and Sarah do become friends, but she isn't black in the book. So that line is not in the book either.
• 12:30
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 12:30
  Speaker B: The book is set in London, it's not set in New York. And Becky, the character in the book, speaks with a cockney accent which is used to denote her socioeconomic status in the book. Yeah, I think this is probably a well meant change by the movie.
• 12:47
  Speaker A: It definitely is.
• 12:48
  Speaker B: Yeah. Since the critical examination of race doesn't really go beyond this one line.
• 12:55
  Speaker A: Yeah, we don't really ever come back.
• 12:58
  Speaker B: To, like, it ends up falling a little flat for me. It feels like it's really more about Sarah and how good and quote, unquote, colorblind she is. I also think it's at least a wee bit problematic to have the only black character be a child servant.
• 13:14
  Speaker A: It's definitely. Yeah. I think the biggest thing with it is that it doesn't do anything.
• 13:18
  Speaker B: Yeah, they don't do anything with it.
• 13:19
  Speaker A: They don't. Like at the end, she just gets adopted by his family and, like, there's never any other discussion of her race, I don't think. Not that I'm recalling or how that affects her. And you know what I mean, other than this one little throwaway line at the beginning. And you'd think it would be a more prominent point of contention maybe with certain things. And I think if they wanted to do that, it would have made sense to maybe finish off the idea by having, I don't know, doing something else with it narratively at the end instead of just kind of like having a line about her being black and how, like, oh, kids, they don't realize. They don't, you know, they're not born racist. They don't really realize why they're supposed to be racist. They just kind of like, are aware that racism exists and then we never touch on it again. So, yeah, I would agree. So the kind of. The main character trait of Sarah is that because of her father, who tells her all these stories, she has a very vivid imagination and she loves telling stories and she entertains the other girls by telling very involved stories. I can't tell if she's reciting stories or if she's making it up. I don't know if we're. What we're supposed.
• 14:29
  Speaker B: You know what I mean? At least from the book, the ideas that she's making come up.
• 14:33
  Speaker A: I wasn't sure in the movie, I couldn't tell if it was like, this is a story she's heard. Like, her Father told her and she's just retelling it or if she's literally just inventing this as she goes. I wasn't entirely sure, but I wanted to know. Okay, well, then you kind of just answered that. But is that similar in the book where she's like a big storyteller and does Ms. Menchen yell at her because there's no make believe allowed in her school? In the most evil villain thing you could do, adult villain thing you could do in a kids movie.
• 15:01
  Speaker B: So Sarah does have a vivid imagination and she does frequently tell the other children's. I don't recall that she ever gets in trouble for it like this until after she's lost her fortune and become a servant. Part of the idea in the book is that Ms. Minchin is like, really indulgent of her up until she doesn't. She doesn't have money anymore. Up until she's no longer a cash cow.
• 15:28
  Speaker A: Yeah, and the movie definitely plays with that a little bit. Like she lets. You can tell she's, you know, letting her get away with more stuff, but, yeah, it's not quite the same. So speaking of the story, she tells one of the story, the main story, actually, that she tells in the movie. And maybe the only story we see her tells kind of this continuous story of Rama, Prince Rama and his love interest with some princess. I don't know if she has a name, maybe I can't remember, but he's telling the story. And it's this interesting thing where we cut to actually seeing depictions of the story she's telling and the story of Rama that she's telling somewhat. Not much, but there are elements of it that parallel what is going on with her father in the war particularly. There's this moment where she's like. And then they shot poison arrows at him and the gas came up and he like passed or you know, and he like, he went to sleep or whatever, or he died even, I think she says, from the poison gas. And in that instance we cut back to her father, who is actually in the war and is being mustard gassed. Yes. As she's saying this. And I wanted to know if that element of the story. Story she's telling, reflecting what's happening with her father, came from the book.
• 16:39
  Speaker B: No, this is an element that was added for the movie. I do like it, though. I think it adds a unique kind of element to the story. And I like that it ties back to her life in India, like growing up in India, because that is something that the book kind of largely Ignores.
• 16:56
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I think my only issue with it is that they have Liam Cunningham play Prince Rama, which felt like maybe not. Like, I get what we're doing there thematically. Again, like, yeah, the stories are similar. They're parallel. But, like, I don't know, it looks real weird. When you're watching he's painted blue and in, like, Hindu, you know, attire. And you're like, okay, sure, that's 1994. We were doing stuff like that still. Yeah. So then we kind of get to the main crux of the story. The first kind of big point or big moment, which is where we find out, or she finds out that her father has reportedly died in the war. And Ms. Minchin finds out. It's, like, during her birthday party and brings her in and sits her down and tells her this. And during the scene where she's telling Sarah that her father's dead, that we get this really great shot. And I assume it was intentional. Well, I think it was definitely intentional because of what happens after. But initially, I didn't know if it was intentional. But we get this wide shot and Sarah's sitting in the foreground and the whole party, like, all of the stuff from the party is, like, in the room behind them in the background. And as Ms. Minchin is telling her that her father's dead this one single black balloon slowly rises off the ground kind of behind Sarah in the background. Almost this weird, ominous specter of death. I thought it was very cool and a great shot. And I wanted to know if there was any chance that that came from the book or was inspired by something from the book or anything, or if it's literally. I felt like it was probably just a movie thing, but I wanted to.
• 18:31
  Speaker B: No, there's no mention of a balloon in the book. That scene does play out very similarly. Otherwise, they're literally in the middle of her birthday party. And as soon as Ms. Minchin gets the news, she's like, party's over. Yeah, you're a servant now.
• 18:47
  Speaker A: Yeah. She is particularly cruel. So then, speaking of. Okay, so you kind of just answered this right after that, she tells her, all right, because the money's cut off because the government sees your dad's assets or so. I don't know. We'll get to that later.
• 19:04
  Speaker B: Yeah, I have a note about that later.
• 19:05
  Speaker A: But because of that, she's like, you don't have any money, so that means you're. I could throw you out, but I'll let you stay here and be a servant, basically.
• 19:12
  Speaker B: Earn your keep.
• 19:13
  Speaker A: Yeah. So she moves up to the attic to work with Becky. And I wanted to know if that came from the book. I assumed it did. Cause it's like the main.
• 19:20
  Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. She gets moved up to the attic almost immediately.
• 19:24
  Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. So then we kind of cut forward a little bit and we're introduced to our neighbor, who is Mr. Charles Something.
• 19:32
  Speaker B: It's Mr. Charles Randolph.
• 19:34
  Speaker A: That's it. He's an old man who lives next door. And we see early on in the film his son also leave to go to war around the same time that Sarah's father is going to war. And we will then later find out that his son goes missing in the war, presumed dead and probably, we assume, dead ultimately. But I wanted to know if there was this old man who lives next door who has a son who goes to war, but then also has, like a. An Indian friend, Ram Dass, in the movie. It's very unclear to me what his relationship to Charles Randolph is in the film or in the Wikipedia summary. What did it say? It said, like, Charles's Indian associate. And I'm like. I don't know what that sounds like code for. Like, they were roommates. Like, you know what I mean? Like, I don't think that's what it is, but I'm just wondering what the deal was there. And so. And also we find out. We see. Because we see him in the beginning of the movie when they're. When the beginning of the movie, Sarah and her father are coming back from India to go to America. And the boat they're on. Ram Dass is on the boat with them.
• 20:46
  Speaker B: Yeah, I don't.
• 20:48
  Speaker A: I don't know any of that come from the book.
• 20:51
  Speaker B: Okay, so Charles Randolph has a kind of corresponding character in the book, but that character is not an old man whose son went missing in the war. He's a guy who has clearly been very ill who moves into the house next door partway through the book.
• 21:09
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 21:09
  Speaker B: And he does have an Indian manservant.
• 21:13
  Speaker A: Right.
• 21:13
  Speaker B: Is what they call him in the book, which I kind of like a butler.
• 21:17
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's. That's how I would assume, essentially. Yeah, he's just like his aide or whatever. Like, he helps. He's an older man. He needs help getting around and stuff. And he. Yeah, he's like a butler. He takes care of the house, probably, and like, whatever. Yeah, and that makes sense. It's just that the movie, I don't think ever really establishes that. Says, like, who he. Like what. That's what he does. You know what I mean? I Could be wrong. But I don't remember ever, like, seeing him. Like, he's just around with Mr. Randolph all the time.
• 21:45
  Speaker B: He's kind of there.
• 21:47
  Speaker A: Yeah. And I was like, okay. But, yeah, him being kind of like a butler sermon or whatever makes sense. It's just, again, I don't think the movie ever establishes that. So speaking of Charles, the old man, at some point, he gets a notice after he finds out that his son is missing. They go to a hospital because there's a man there, a soldier who is unidentified. And he thinks it may. And they're like, maybe it's your son. He goes. And he's like, it's not my son. He sees him. He's only able to see part of his face because this soldier was in a gas attack and his eyes were mustard gassed, I guess injured. So he has the top of his head wrapped up, so we can't really see him all that well, except for the bottom half of his face. But Charles knows that's not my son. But Ram Dass kind of talks him into adopting, or adopting is not the right word, but bringing him home and taking care of him anyways. Yeah.
• 22:39
  Speaker B: He kind of takes him in, like, astray.
• 22:41
  Speaker A: Yes. And it seems very clear right away that that's her dad. Like, when we see him, it looks like Liam Cunningham's face. I'm like, oh, okay. And I legit did not remember any of the details of this movie. I think I did see it once or twice when I was a little kid, but it's definitely upon watching it this time, I did not have a ton of, like, oh, I remember all of this moments. I remembered it a little. But I think if I rewatched Secret Garden, I remember because I think I watched that movie a lot, and I don't think I watched this one a ton. So I didn't remember if the whole thing of it maybe, like, thinking it was maybe gonna be her dad was like a red herring or. True. Anyways, does any of this come from the book?
• 23:19
  Speaker B: None of this is from the book. Okay, so first things first. The book is not set during the First World War.
• 23:27
  Speaker A: That, in retrospect, makes obvious sense to me because it was written, like, 30 years before.
• 23:33
  Speaker B: I don't think there are any specific dates given in the book. But if we go back to our prequel episode, Burnett wrote the original short story in 1888. The novel was published in 1905. And given that, and also just kind of based on the vibes of the story itself, I don't think it's wrong to assume that it takes place, like, roughly within that time frame, turn of the century.
• 23:59
  Speaker A: Did we get any indication of what war or what her dad goes off to do?
• 24:05
  Speaker B: I'm getting to that.
• 24:06
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 24:06
  Speaker B: I'm getting to that. So my next thing. I might as well just say this now. Her dad is actually dead in the book.
• 24:15
  Speaker A: Okay, I will say that felt. I don't want to say cheap in the movie, but it felt. I don't know, it felt like a very Hollywood, like, ending.
• 24:25
  Speaker B: It's pretty Hollywood, yeah. There's no miraculous comeback from the grave for Captain Crew. So instead of being in the war, what happens is that he loses all of his money in a diamond mine venture, and then he dies of brain fever.
• 24:48
  Speaker A: Okay. Do we know what brain fever means?
• 24:52
  Speaker B: Brain fever.
• 24:53
  Speaker A: A lot of things.
• 24:54
  Speaker B: It can mean a lot of things because it's an outdated medical term, but it was a really common thing to kind A. Kind of a common thing that they blamed a lot of things on during this time period. So probably something like meningitis.
• 25:13
  Speaker A: That's. Okay. That's what I was thinking. I was wondering if it was maybe something even more. Less pathological or maybe not pathological, but I was wondering. Cause I could also see it as like, a euphemism for, like, he went crazy and killed himself or something. Like, I could all. You know what I mean? Well, because. Especially because you tied it to, like, he lost all his money in the diamond mine adventure, and then he dies of brain fever. I didn't know if you were trying to imply that those two things were connected or just.
• 25:42
  Speaker B: It's implied in the book that part of the reason he gets sick is because of, like, the stress and depression from this failed business venture.
• 25:55
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 25:55
  Speaker B: I don't think there's any implication that he, like, takes his own life or anything like that.
• 26:00
  Speaker A: Yeah, I wasn't sure. And because I agree with you, meningitis makes sense. Or any sort of, you know, even just a fever, like, could reason feasibly, you know, if you cook your brain, if it gets bad enough. But, yeah, that makes sense. I just didn't know yet. I could also, like I said, see it as being some sort of euphemism for something else, but that makes sense.
• 26:20
  Speaker B: Yeah. So the man who moves in next door in the book is Mr. Carrisford. And he was Captain Crew's former business partner, also in the diamond mine venture. And he also had brain fever, but recovered. And he feels so guilty about what happened that he has vowed to find Sarah and Take care of her. But he doesn't know where she is. He knows that she's at school somewhere. And he's basically been searching schools in Europe for her.
• 26:56
  Speaker A: Okay, so it is a similar idea. At least then that. So when you say when, why does the Mr. Or why does the guy move in with the old guy in the movie or in the book? So you said the man who moves in next door was his former business partner. Oh, wait, Mr. Carrisford is the old guy. Yes, he's the corresponding character to Randolph or Charles.
• 27:21
  Speaker B: So Mr. Carrisford and Ram Dass move into the house next door.
• 27:25
  Speaker A: Okay. But they don't take in, like, somebody. A mysterious person. Okay, I thought I read that differently, and I thought you meant that they did take in somebody who was the former business part. I see what you're saying. Okay, fair enough. So that's all very different. I'm sure we'll talk more about that later. It was the opening quote, and I had to ask because it's very good. I like it a lot. But Sarah, after she gets thrown up in the attic and she's, you know, kind of being beat down by Ms. Minchin. Ms. Minchin comes in and this is, I think, after she gets the locket back, potentially.
• 27:58
  Speaker B: Yeah, I think so.
• 28:00
  Speaker A: Something like that. And is, like, yelling at her and is just berating her. And Sarah stands up to her and she gives this big speech back in response. And it's the all girls are princesses speech. And I wanted to know if that speech and, you know, came from the book pretty directly because it's a very memorable speech. And like you said, it's. There's a reason it was the opening quote because it's. It's good.
• 28:25
  Speaker B: So the general idea of that speech is pulled from the book. It is kind of the thesis of the entire narrative that it's your attitude and your behavior that makes you a princess. Not like your wealth or your beauty.
• 28:40
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 28:40
  Speaker B: Et cetera, et cetera. However, this specific line and speech are not in the book.
• 28:46
  Speaker A: Okay, interesting. I would take it a step further and say the movie is. Doesn't even indicate that it's. Which is maybe an issue I have with it, but that it's your attitude or behavior that makes you a princess. But it's literally just by nature of being a girl. Like, it's kind of. At least what it boils down to. Which I think is fine in the sense that what I think the message is going for in the movie is that all people have inherent worth and inherent Merit. It's not, you know, and I think it's manifesting in response to, as a girl being a princess. Because this is a story about women's empowerment for little girls, written at a time when that was neat. You know what I mean? That was a thing that did not get a lot of play.
• 29:25
  Speaker B: It's a pretty solidly early mid-90s historical girl power kind of messaging.
• 29:34
  Speaker A: You mean? Yeah. Yes.
• 29:35
  Speaker B: The movie specifically.
• 29:36
  Speaker A: Yeah. When you said 90s, I didn't know if you meant 1890s. You mean, like. Did you mean, like 1990s?
• 29:42
  Speaker B: I mean 1990s.
• 29:43
  Speaker A: Yeah. Like that style of story, which is more almost like a second wave feminism kind of thing.
• 29:47
  Speaker B: Absolutely.
• 29:48
  Speaker A: Of girls kind of having an inherent femininity and value because they're women and not because they're people necessarily. But, like, there's something special and different about, you know, being quote, unquote, in actual, like, a woman. And this movie's playing on that. And again, it is a thing that, with feminism, has. Makes perfect sense. The kind of arc and the journey that feminism has taken in response to thousands of years of oppressive patriarchy. You get a part, a section of time where it is.
• 30:19
  Speaker B: You get an attempt to swing the pendulum hard the other way.
• 30:23
  Speaker A: Yes. Which is women are great because they're women, and that's why they're great. And how dare you say they're not great. And like. Yeah. It's a justifiable step on. It's a very understandable step on the path towards actual equality. And you know what I mean? And that. Because it also has its own inherent issues.
• 30:42
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 30:43
  Speaker A: That, you know, we could discuss, but we don't need to for this. Because it's fine. We understand what it's doing. If you don't understand what it's doing, we could talk, ask a question. We'll talk about it in the prequel episode. Or if you don't understand what the issues of that. Of that would be, we can talk about in the prequel episode. But we're going to keep this episode fairly short because we're all so busy. It's the holidays and we got so much going on. So that night, she then goes to bed. I think it is because the locket gets stolen. Because then she likes. Yells at him as, like, you don't get any food the next day or whatever.
• 31:11
  Speaker B: Yeah. She locks them in.
• 31:13
  Speaker A: Yeah. But then Ram Dass overhears them. I think that night, kind of imagining a whole feast. Sarah's like, don't worry, it's fine. We'll just Pretend we have this whole. We'll imagine this feast and it'll be great. And Ram Dass, like overhears this and then I guess the idea is breaks. And again, I'm framing this in his like, ridiculous way as possible. It's a fantasy story for little kids. It's fine. It's not really a fantasy necessarily, but it's like a fantasy. Ish.
• 31:44
  Speaker B: The movie has more.
• 31:45
  Speaker A: It has a magical realism.
• 31:46
  Speaker B: It has more of a magical realism kind of flavor to it than the book does. Yeah.
• 31:52
  Speaker A: But anyway, so Ram Dass breaks into the apartment while they're sleeping and completely decorates the attic with all kinds of cloth and like fancy. Not jewelry, but like candelabras and all kinds of cool stuff. And then sets out a huge feast on a table for them. And they wake up the next morning and they're like, holy cow, it came true. And they're, you know, they have this big feast. I want to know if that came from the book.
• 32:16
  Speaker B: That actually does come from the book. Yeah. And Ram Dass does this multiple times throughout the second part of the book. He has this like. He concocts this plan along with Mr. Carrisford, his employer, that they're going to help these girls in the attic by like giving them stuff.
• 32:38
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 32:40
  Speaker B: And he does do it by like climbing on the roofs and like he goes in through the skylight.
• 32:47
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 32:47
  Speaker B: And takes all this stuff in. He's described in the book as an agile, soft footed oriental.
• 32:53
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 32:55
  Speaker B: There's actually 1800s. There's actually a lot less Victorian racism in this than I anticipated, but there definitely is some.
• 33:04
  Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, my note in the movie was, man, that dude is impressively stealthy. He got in there and he made a bed underneath while they were sleeping. Again, I think the idea is what we're doing with Ram Dass is its own problematic thing. We haven't. I think you had a note about that.
• 33:20
  Speaker B: We'll discuss.
• 33:21
  Speaker A: He's very much the magical person of color trope, which we'll talk more about. But so another little side plot that is really great in the movie that I thought was fun is that Amelia is Maria Menchin's sister. Maria is the lady who runs the.
• 33:37
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's Ms. Mentioned.
• 33:38
  Speaker A: Yeah, Ms. Mentioned. She's the one who runs the school, the boarding school. But she has a sister who helps her and teaches some classes and stuff like that named Amelia, who's very clearly been bullied by her older sister her whole life and kind of just does whatever she tells her to. But Sarah sits Down with Emelia in time because she sees an interaction that Amelia has with the milkman. The milkman shows up one day and her.
• 34:00
  Speaker B: And they have a flirtation.
• 34:02
  Speaker A: They have a little flirtation. And Sarah sees this. And so she sits down with Amelia and has a conversation with her about how she should run away with the milkman. She's like, you can just go. You should just go and do that. And she does. And I wanted to know if that came from the book. Does Sarah convince Emelia to run away with the dashing young milkman?
• 34:22
  Speaker B: It does not. The storyline was invented for the movie. I do like that Amelia gets to run away and be happy. And also the movie gives her a little more personality than the book does. She's kind of a nothing character in the book.
• 34:36
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 34:36
  Speaker B: But there's also a kind of satisfying scene at the very end of the book where Amelia finally stands up to her sister and kind of points out that if Ms. Minchin had just been kind to Sarah that things would have ended up much better for them in the school.
• 34:54
  Speaker A: Yeah, that would have been a nice moment to have in the movie. So then we're getting to the climax here and Ms. Minchin comes in and sees the room full of all the stuff that Ram Dass put in there and is like, you stole all this. You must have stolen this. Where did this all come from? And so she calls the police to like come arrest Sarah. And Sarah has to make a dashing escape. She runs up to her room as the police burst in and they her and her and Becky get a board across to the. The most impressive physical feat in the entire movie. Not even the crossing the board. It's the way she' able to hold the entire length of like a 20 foot board up from just one end and get it across. Yeah, that would be impossible. That's literally maybe the most magical thing that happens in this movie. The leverage of a board that long with a little girl. There's no way that would be hard for a very strong person to do anyways. But she gets the board across and it's like pouring down rain and storming.
• 35:54
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's like raining. Raining.
• 35:56
  Speaker A: Yeah. And she crawls across this board and almost slips and falls off like four times. And then she does slip. The board slips and falls and she starts falling, but then she catches the edge of the building and is holding on in the rain and then pulls herself up. It's kind of ridiculous and doesn't feel remotely like. I didn't think it was necessarily like the right climax for this movie. And I wanted to know if it came from the book.
• 36:26
  Speaker B: Absolutely none of that happens in the book. Yeah, yeah. The movie really went for that Hollywood action, suspense ending there.
• 36:36
  Speaker A: It's not like awful. Cause it's not like. It's not like doing a fight scene or anything ridiculous. You know, it is like a thing. I don't know. It's a fun perilous scene, but it just feels a little outside of the scope of what the rest of the movie has been doing. Kind of. I don't know.
• 36:52
  Speaker B: Well, and for me it really jumped the shark when she was like hanging onto the ledge.
• 36:56
  Speaker A: Yes, that's the big thing.
• 36:57
  Speaker B: If she had her fingertips, I think.
• 36:59
  Speaker A: What would have made it work better is if she had done that. And then maybe it does slip and fall. Like at the last second it slips and falls and we think she fell or something. But then the camera pans back up and we see her whole body hanging on the ledge. You know what I mean? Instead of the dramatic, I'm hanging by a single finger.
• 37:18
  Speaker B: There's no way.
• 37:18
  Speaker A: In the pouring rain.
• 37:20
  Speaker B: There's just no way.
• 37:21
  Speaker A: It's just a little. Like I said, I think they could have kept it very similar and still very intense and dramatic and just made it a little less Hollywood and it would have worked better. But I also thought it was very funny that they sent four entire grown police officers to arrest one 10 year old girl. Cause Ms. Minchin calls them as like that you gotta come arrest this girl. She stole a bunch of stuff or whatever and they send four cops for her.
• 37:45
  Speaker B: That's a one cop job.
• 37:46
  Speaker A: Yeah, seems like at most two. But it's just like, okay, sure, you're.
• 37:50
  Speaker B: Out with your partner.
• 37:51
  Speaker A: We sent the whole paddy wagon.
• 37:56
  Speaker B: No, so in the book, what happens at the end is that the, the monkey crosses into Sarah's attic and she's like, oh, I better take him back home so they're not missing him. So she takes the monkey back across the street to Mr. Carisford's house. And then once she's inside, she's talking to Mr. Carisford for the first time. And then her true identity comes to light and Mr. Carrisford reveals that he's been searching all over Europe for her and actually. And that there actually were diamonds in the mines and now she's a diamond heiress.
• 38:31
  Speaker A: Wow, look at that. Yeah, they should have kept that because the actress was like.
• 38:35
  Speaker B: Right.
• 38:35
  Speaker A: An actual heiress. So. Yeah. Which I mean, I guess she still is in the movie because her father is very wealthy.
• 38:42
  Speaker B: And then when he's the heiress of Whatever he is.
• 38:45
  Speaker A: Yeah. Whatever he got his money from. Which we never really find out. So then we get to the. The big moment where she did, like you said, she gets over into the. The neighbor's house, and in the movie, she actually sees her father. And she's like, oh, my God, Dad. And he does not recognize her because he has amnesia. Yeah, he's had amnesia this whole time. He does not recognize her. And the cops in Miss Mention burst in, and Sarah's like, it's my dad, or whatever. And Ms. Mention just immediately lies and is like, she has no father, even though she clearly looks at him and knows that it's her d. Dad. And I wanted to know if any of that came from the book, because then right after that, her dad, like, just immediately remembers.
• 39:27
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 39:27
  Speaker A: And anyways, does any of this come from the book?
• 39:30
  Speaker B: No, none of that comes from the book.
• 39:31
  Speaker A: Okay. I read in the descript or in the Wikipedia summary, it says, like, initially he. Richard, doesn't remember her, but then with the help of Ram Dass, he remembers. And I'm like, what.
• 39:43
  Speaker B: What did Ram Dass. What is he purported to have done?
• 39:46
  Speaker A: Yes. Because in the movie, what happens is he's like, I don't know her. And they take her out and they're, like, dragging her to put her in the paddy wagon. And then, like, Ram Dass comes over and stands next to Richard and doesn't say anything. Doesn't do anything. He just stands there.
• 40:04
  Speaker B: He just stands there.
• 40:05
  Speaker A: And then all of a sudden, Richard goes, wait a second. And he runs out and he's like, that's my daughter. And I was like, wait. And so what he did, I think, was just, like, activate his magic person of color. And it, like, that's the only thing that makes any sense. Yeah. He came over and was like, hey, man, I'm from India. Did you notice? And he's like, wait a second.
• 40:27
  Speaker B: Oh, I remember. I remember everything.
• 40:30
  Speaker A: You must be magical. And then. Yeah. And then he remembers and. Yeah. So it's kind of absurd.
• 40:37
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 40:37
  Speaker A: It doesn't surprise me. It doesn't come from the book because, again, it's all very Hollywood. And this sounds like. I'm like. I think it sounds like I'm, like, overly critical of the movie. I actually liked the movie quite a bit, actually. I did, too.
• 40:48
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 40:48
  Speaker A: I thought it was very cute. It's a fun little movie. I didn't love it mainly because of some of this stuff that just felt a little.
• 40:55
  Speaker B: It really does. It goes off the rails a little at the end.
• 41:00
  Speaker A: Overly clean, a little overly saccharine, I guess, but it's beautifully shot. It's a stunningly gorgeous and well made movie. And again, a lot of it is very good and very fun and performance is all great and all that stuff. So I did really enjoy it. But I just think there's some of these little. And it's mostly story choices, like in the script writing phase that I just think. And they also feel to me very much like studio meddling. They feel very much to me like, well, we need a happy ending.
• 41:27
  Speaker B: I saw somewhere, and I don't think we mentioned this in the prequel, but I saw somewhere when I was doing research for the prequel, that the idea of her father actually being alive still was something that they pulled from the Shirley Temple version of it.
• 41:47
  Speaker A: Okay, so you say that I did. I remember now. I did see something. I don't know the extent, but I saw something that said that this version is loosely adapted from the book and directly inspired by the 1939 version or whatever it was. Yeah. Okay, so that's interesting. I guess that makes sense. And. Yeah, and it's just. It's. It's too. It's. I don't know. There's something to it. I Like, in the sense that it does make for a nice ending because it feels. It feels particularly cruel that this little girl has lost her mother and her sister, brother, or some other sibling, and then also loses her dad. And it's just. It's a lot. And, like, I understand that the urge to be like. Okay. And especially because the story is about, like, believing and, like, you know, be if kind of believing in opposition to, like, hardships and holding onto kind of, like your hope and your, you know, keeping the positive aspects of your personality in the face of abject cruelty from the world. And so I think rewarding. That feels okay. Like, it feels like, yeah, sure. But it also just feels kind of cheap. And it feels a little like it's just. It's too easy. It's too sacred.
• 43:07
  Speaker B: Yeah. It's a little maudlin is what it is. And, you know, Victorian literature is a little maudlin.
• 43:16
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's right.
• 43:17
  Speaker B: But in a different way than this is.
• 43:20
  Speaker A: Yeah. No. Yeah. So happy ending, he remembers, Ms. Mentioned, just gives up, I guess, and decides she's gonna go live on the street. Like, she just wanders away. And that was my next. Or one of my other questions was, does Ms. Minchin get put out on the street where she's forced to become a chimney Sweep.
• 43:40
  Speaker B: No, because that makes zero sense.
• 43:43
  Speaker A: Sure. Yeah, but. And then my other question was, one of the main little girl characters in the movie who's kind of been a recurring important character is Lavinia, who's kind of the bully who picked on while all the other girls really liked Sarah. She was the one who kind of kept picking on.
• 43:58
  Speaker B: Yeah, Lavinia was jealous.
• 44:00
  Speaker A: Yeah, Was jealous. And she's just a jerk. And then at the end, Sarah comes up to her and everybody kind of thinks she's going to, like, tell her off because Sarah has been had her, you know, her status restored, essentially.
• 44:15
  Speaker B: She's triumphed.
• 44:16
  Speaker A: Yeah. Because her father's alive, she has all her money back, and she's leaving the school to go be happy or whatever. And so people. You kind of expect her to, like, get in a little jab at Lavinia or something, but instead she gives her a hug and says, all girls are princesses, even you, or whatever. And I wanted to know if that came from the book.
• 44:34
  Speaker B: It could be misremembering, but I'm pretty sure Sarah and Lavinia never hug in the book.
• 44:38
  Speaker A: Do they have the same dynamic? Like, is Lavinia a bully?
• 44:41
  Speaker B: Yeah, she's a bully and a snitch.
• 44:44
  Speaker A: The worst. Okay, cool. All right. Those are all of my kind of was this in the book questions, but I do have a couple questions that we're gonna get into in Lost in Adaptation. Just show me the way to get.
• 44:57
  Speaker B: Out of here and I'll be on my way.
• 44:59
  Speaker A: Why was it lost? Yes. Yes.
• 45:02
  Speaker B: And I want to get un.
• 45:03
  Speaker A: Lost as soon as possible. Is there any explanation in the book as to why Ms. Minchin is so cruel? Or is it just kind of a generic kid story, she's the evil person kind of thing? There's also a little indication in the movie. I think it's right after the thing where she's like, all girls are princesses. Didn't your dad ever tell you? Or something like that? And when Ms. Minchin storms out, we get a look on her face like, clearly her parents did not like. Yeah. That she had a rough upbringing and that her father didn't tell her that she was a princess or didn't love her.
• 45:38
  Speaker B: Perhaps her parents were cold.
• 45:40
  Speaker A: Yes. So, like, that's the only little inkling we get of, like, why she's the way she is. And I think it works fine. And I don't need the movie to explain she's the evil headmistress. It's fine. But I was just wondering if the book gave us any more for why she's evil.
• 45:56
  Speaker B: I mean, I would say it's kind of a little. Little column A, a little column B. I mean, I guess we never learn her backstory in the book, if that's what you're looking for. Like, she is kind of a villain for the sake of the narrative needing a villain.
• 46:10
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 46:11
  Speaker B: And bitter spinster is a pretty common trope of the era.
• 46:15
  Speaker A: Absolutely.
• 46:16
  Speaker B: Still a pretty common trope. But there are also a lot of specific things that she doesn't like about Sarah, because Sarah is everything that Ms. Minchin isn't. Right. She's wealthy, she's smart, she's kind, she's creative, she's well liked. And even when everything is taken away from Sarah, Ms. Minchin still can't break her. And she really hates her for that.
• 46:39
  Speaker A: That makes sense. Yeah. And that makes a lot of sense. I think. Again, I think you can get a lot of that from the movie because I do think the movie does a fairly good job of kind of characterizing her without really expositing all that much. Like, we don't know much about her or. But like I said, I think there's a few moments that kind of help us get a little bit of a view into why she is the way she is. So, yeah, I think it works. Like I said, I was just kind of curious if there was. Yeah. I was asking, like, does the book, like, talk about, like, maybe she has a scene where she talks about her father beating her? I don't know, something where she.
• 47:11
  Speaker B: No.
• 47:12
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 47:12
  Speaker B: Not that I recall.
• 47:13
  Speaker A: Okay. So assuming my other question here was assuming the whole thing with Richard being alive comes from the book, which it doesn't. My question was, what happened there? What was the mix up? Because in the movie it was kind of strange. Like they're like, oh, he's dead. And then. And that. And Charles, the neighbor guy's son is missing, but then somehow. And Charles shows up in the. Richard shows up in the hospital and they're like, we don't know who he is. He has no identification or whatever. Maybe he's your son. And then they just never figure out who he is. And there doesn't really need to be any explanation because record keeping and communication in World War I was, you know, not perfect. But it still felt like a strange mix up that I wasn't entirely sure what happened.
• 48:00
  Speaker B: And so I didn't know if I.
• 48:01
  Speaker A: Was hoping if it was in the book, you would have some more background.
• 48:03
  Speaker B: But, I mean, I think the idea is supposed to be that, like, so there are these two guys, right? And one of them dies and one of them lives.
• 48:13
  Speaker A: Right.
• 48:14
  Speaker B: And I guess they misidentified the other guy as her father.
• 48:19
  Speaker A: Right. I just found that strange. I didn't understand how that happened.
• 48:23
  Speaker B: I don't know.
• 48:23
  Speaker A: You know what I mean? Like, why would you think the son was the other guy? Like, what made them identify? Because I assume what would have happened. What you're saying is that. And this does track with the movie, that the old guy's neighbor's son, or the old guy who is the neighbor, his son died and they identified his body as Sarah's dad.
• 48:47
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 48:48
  Speaker A: And then the guy. But I don't understand what would have made them identify that guy's son as Sarah's dad. Like, I understand. Like, oh, this guy doesn't have any identification on him. We don't know who he is. Yeah, sure, fine. But what made them go, but this guy is Richard and he's dead. Like, that's what confused me. Anyways, again, it's World War I, whatever. Like, people got that stuff happened. It still happens. It's just.
• 49:14
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's. Yeah. I think it's easy enough to hand wave away for that reason, but. But when you look at it too closely, it is a little bit like, what? Yeah, yeah. I would actually like the simpler explanation of her father dying in a war over the whole diamond mine business, which I think is a little convoluted.
• 49:35
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 49:36
  Speaker B: But I'm not sure. The thing that confused me was I don't know if the loss of his fortune that then leaves her destitute makes as much sense as it does in the book because he loses his money through this, like, bad business venture.
• 49:54
  Speaker A: In the book.
• 49:55
  Speaker B: In the book and in the movie, all they say is they were like, oh, he. He's dead. And the government seized all of his assets. But why were his assets seized?
• 50:05
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 50:06
  Speaker B: Did he owe back taxes? Like, what's the British government doing? And then Sarah's a British citizen, so I feel like she would become a ward of the state or something.
• 50:17
  Speaker A: I don't know. Yeah. I will say, I don't know the intricacies of. And this takes. The movie takes place in America, so.
• 50:24
  Speaker B: Right.
• 50:25
  Speaker A: Yeah. So I don't know. Like, what, What.
• 50:27
  Speaker B: But it seems to me like at that point like some kind of government agency would like, come to collect her now for sure.
• 50:35
  Speaker A: In 1910. I don't know. I think also probably, yes. That the guy who came to be like, hey, she's. Or her father's Dead would have also been like, either reported to somebody or he would have also been like, okay, so now I'm taking you to like an orphanage or whatever or something like that. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know why. I think the idea here would be that instead of doing that, that Ms. Minchin must have been like, oh, she can stay here. I'll take care of her. And they were like, okay. You know what I mean? I guess that's. That doesn't answer the money question. That just answers to like, why she wasn't. Didn't become a war of state thing. The money thing, I think is just. Yeah, it doesn't. Who knows? Like, maybe something happened where the COVID Who knows? I don't know enough of. Again, I think the movie is aided by the fact that I couldn't begin to claim to know what would happen with a dead military guy's money in 1913 or whatever. You know what I mean? Like, maybe the government would seize it. I don't know. It's wartime. Maybe they were like, like, we need this money. I have no idea. So, yeah, who knows? It does seem unlikely that that would happen, but it. I don't think it's impossible.
• 51:47
  Speaker B: So it's like just vague enough to bother me a lot.
• 51:50
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's definitely one of those things you're like, what is going on? Whatever. Like, it's one of those things you have to just. It's not what the movie's about. Who cares? Like, it's fine. Yeah. All right. Those are all of my questions. Let's go ahead and find out what Katie thought was better in the book. You like to read?
• 52:07
  Speaker B: Oh, yes, I love to read.
• 52:09
  Speaker A: What do you like to read?
• 52:13
  Speaker B: Everything. So right off the bat, I do think that we lose something wonderfully Dickensian with moving the setting to New York. Ultimately, it doesn't really matter. No, but turn of the century London and street urchins just go together like bread and butter.
• 52:29
  Speaker A: This is true. I think they do a pretty good job of cause. Honestly, you'd asked me where this was set.
• 52:34
  Speaker B: Yeah, it would be like, looks. It could be London.
• 52:37
  Speaker A: Like, other than the. No accents or anything, you know, everybody.
• 52:39
  Speaker B: Sounds American, but other than that, cobblestones and soot everywhere.
• 52:44
  Speaker A: It's a big city in 1912 or whatever. Like, it might as well be. We got. We have chimney sweeps. Come on. We got a little boy covered who like, climb falls down chimneys while he's doing a chimney sweep job.
• 52:54
  Speaker B: I just want to say that I love that you have given A different date every time. You mention what year this takes place.
• 53:02
  Speaker A: The 1910s. It's World War I.
• 53:04
  Speaker B: You just throw out a different year every time.
• 53:06
  Speaker A: I'm just impressing everybody, everybody with my knowledge of the. When World War I ran, which I'm probably wrong. I don't. It was like 1911, 16 or something.
• 53:14
  Speaker B: Wikipedia says it's 1914 when this takes place, which I would have to. We can feel free to fact check me. But I don't think America was in the war at that point. So I'm not sure why Mr. Randolph's son was going.
• 53:27
  Speaker A: I think they were. The war was 1914 to 1918. So I was wrong when I said 1913. Because that have been.
• 53:33
  Speaker B: Because we joined the war late.
• 53:35
  Speaker A: We did, but I think. I think it would. What's. What year did you say? 1930.
• 53:40
  Speaker B: 19.
• 53:41
  Speaker A: 1914. 1914. Okay. Well then that does seem unlikely.
• 53:44
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 53:45
  Speaker A: When did the U.S. join? Enter world. Nope. Enter World War I. Yeah. United States entered World War I on April 6, 1917.
• 53:54
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 53:55
  Speaker A: So we're the Calvary.
• 53:57
  Speaker B: What do you want?
• 53:57
  Speaker A: Well, but it would have been. It definitely would. Yeah. This movie would have had to take place in 1917.
• 54:02
  Speaker B: Unless there was a time jump of a few years that there was no indication of.
• 54:06
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 54:09
  Speaker B: The scene where Sarah shows off that she can speak French I thought was overall better in the book because it happens in front of the entire class, which then adds to Ms. Minchin's like humiliation and kind of bolsters that hatred of Sarah that she has. Although I did like the addition of the French teacher suggesting that perhaps Sarah could help Ms. Mention with her pronunciation.
• 54:33
  Speaker A: I actually really liked that scene in the movie. And I'm not saying you didn't, but I thought that scene in the movie was really fun. Yeah. Where the teacher comes up to her and she responds in perfect French or well, relatively perfect French for a 10 year old American girl or whatever. But yeah, I could see adding it being in that class setting to amplify the humiliation for Mrs. Mentionment or Ms. Mention would make sense.
• 54:58
  Speaker B: So the book takes place over the course of several years, whereas the movie takes place over an indeterminate amount of time. Maybe a year.
• 55:07
  Speaker A: I would say about a year. Probably maybe like eight months, six months.
• 55:11
  Speaker B: I don't know. So Sarah is seven when the book starts and I think 11 when it ends. And I do think that the expanded timeline is important to the journey that she goes on. Cause she's at the school for a handful of years before her father dies. Like she's very much like entrenched there before that happens. And then she also is a servant for a few years afterwards.
• 55:39
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I think in the movie, if you asked me, like, if I was just guessing, based on the way the language of the film, I would say she's probably at the school for like a month or two before her father dies. And then like another couple months after would be my guess.
• 55:54
  Speaker B: I would agree. That's kind of the vibe I got as well. Something in the book that I was not really expecting is there's like a little bit of, I want to say, class consciousness in this book. Sarah understands that she has such a nice life because she got lucky, which is more than I can say for any modern billionaire.
• 56:18
  Speaker A: Sarah is luck pilled.
• 56:19
  Speaker B: You hear that, Aaron? There's a couple things, but particularly one moment she put her hand against Becky's cheek. Why? She said, we are just the same. I am only a little girl like you. It's just an accident that I am not you and you are not me.
• 56:41
  Speaker A: Yeah. So the movie takes the class element, which it's still there a little bit, but turns it into a race thing. Cause with Becky, like about. Cause I think there's a similar exchange right in the movie. Am I crazy that she does something where she. Like.
• 56:53
  Speaker B: I don't remember her saying that.
• 56:55
  Speaker A: Not that, but I thought it's something about that when he said she put her hand against Becky's cheek.
• 56:58
  Speaker B: There is a scene where she puts her hand on Becky's cheek.
• 57:01
  Speaker A: Yeah. It says something about them being similar or something. Or something. It was something. I thought that they turned that into something about like her being colorblind or something like that.
• 57:09
  Speaker B: I don't remember what she says in that scene.
• 57:11
  Speaker A: I think it is. I think it's something relevant to the racial difference. Like that something. And so I think that's what the movie took is like, okay, let's do this. And then we can put this spin on it. Which I think it's fine.
• 57:21
  Speaker B: Which. And honestly, the examination of class was pretty common in literature in this era. I mean, we're not terribly far removed from Dickens at this point. But I thought it was really interesting especially to show up in children's literature.
• 57:39
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 57:40
  Speaker B: We see Sarah feed a mouse in the attic in the book or in the movie, rather. But in the book she befriends a whole family of rats. And we even go into the main rat's point of view a couple times in the book we're like. With the rat. Which I thought was fun.
• 58:01
  Speaker A: I'M actually surprised we didn't do that, because that seems like something would be right up Cuaron's alley. Like, he likes that kind of weird stuff.
• 58:06
  Speaker B: And she names the. She gives the rat a sick name, too. She names the rat Melchizedek, which I would not have known how to pronounce if I hadn't been listening to the audiobook.
• 58:19
  Speaker A: Yeah. How is it spelled?
• 58:21
  Speaker B: Hang on.
• 58:22
  Speaker A: I'm just curious, because I want to see how I would say, like, if I was looking at it. I'm just curious what I think it would. Or how I would think it would be pronounced.
• 58:29
  Speaker B: I'm never going to be able to find it in here. I was hoping I would just open.
• 58:33
  Speaker A: The page and find just, like, half.
• 58:35
  Speaker B: And it would just be there.
• 58:36
  Speaker A: That's okay.
• 58:37
  Speaker B: I can look in the. I actually managed to get all three versions of the book this time.
• 58:45
  Speaker A: Oh, that's a. That's a. Is it that?
• 58:50
  Speaker B: No, close.
• 58:51
  Speaker A: Because that's a priest from the Bible. It's like a character from the Bible. Well, this one that came up spelled Melchizedek. Melchizedek. Yeah, Melchizedek.
• 59:03
  Speaker B: Maybe that was how it was. I don't remember.
• 59:06
  Speaker A: I don't know.
• 59:07
  Speaker B: It's close to that. No. Yes. With the C at the end.
• 59:11
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's just a different. That's the. That's what it is in the New Testament. The other version with the K is what it is in the. Translated into the King James Version.
• 59:22
  Speaker B: So.
• 59:22
  Speaker A: Or so anyway. I don't know. Just read. Anyways, it means king and righteousness.
• 59:29
  Speaker B: Nice. He's a rat. He's got a whole rat family, and they're friends with Sarah to the point that when Sarah leaves the school, I was worried about the rat. I was like, who's gonna feed the rats?
• 59:42
  Speaker A: Who feeds the rat? Yeah.
• 59:45
  Speaker B: Okay. My last thing here is that I thought Ram Dass got a little shortchanged in the movie. We talked about the movie leaning into the magical person of color trope. Yes, Again, especially if we take Wikipedia's word, that he was somehow able to make Captain Crew regain his memory by staring at him. By staring at him intensely. We also, as I mentioned, we know in the book exactly how he was getting things in and out of Sarah's attic. Whereas the movie kind of hand waves that and makes it seem more like straight up magic.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker B: There's also a scene in the book when Sarah first sees Ram Dass across the alley, and he's like, in the other attic window across the way. And she sees him and she thinks about how much he must miss India and how lonely and sad he must be. And, you know, the book's portrayal is obviously steeped in the racism and colonialism of the time period, and it's far from perfect. But I do think that that one moment did more work to humanize that character than the entire movie did.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker A: Yeah, he is as tropey as and as he is a thing. He is a plot device in the movie in a way that is rough. He's like, he's. His performance is fun and he has some fun, some interesting and kind of compelling moments. I really like. And the reason I like it is because I don't even really know what to make of it. The scene where he's out doing stretching or doing something on the balcony and then the girls come out and they all start doing it together is really like sweet little scene. And like I said, I think part of what I like about it is I'm not really even sure what they were doing or what to make of it. It's just like it's this interesting little moment that they share, which I thought was cool. But again, for the most part, he doesn't really say anything. We don't know anything about him. He's just there to facilitate, to make the old guy realize he should bring this soldier home, to give Sarah stuff magically and then to magically make.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker B: Yeah, he's there to help the white people.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker A: Yeah, he's there to help the white people. And in a way, like literally, like.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker B: Literally there to help the black people. Also, his role in the book is to help the white people. Yeah, but I think the book, the book did not lean into that magical person of color trope the way that the movie did. Yeah, it's a different kind of racism.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker A: Different kind of racism. Yeah. And again, it's not that the movie, it's not done maliciously or cruelly by the movie. It is very much that style of this movie is because Quran, I think, is a progressive guy. This movie is, you know, in everything it does. The stuff with Becky, the stuff with, even with Ram Dass, I think it in its heart it would desire to be like very empathetic and progressive and you know, culturally sympathetic and culturally sensitive. But it just because of the nature of who it was probably written by and that sort of thing, it just does end up being patronizing and trope ridden and a very two dimensional or one dimensional portrayal of a guy from India. He's just there to be magic and help white People. All right. That was everything Katie had for better in the book. Let's find out what she thought was better in the movie. My life has taught me one lesson, Hugo, and not the one I thought it would. Happy endings only happen in the movies.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker B: I really liked that we got to see a little snippet of Sarah living in India. I think that's something that obviously would have been an important part of her life. But like I said, the book kind of largely ignores it. We don't really talk about the fact that she had lived in India for her entire childhood.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker A: It's a fun opening. That place where she is is the most sound. Stagey. I don't know if it's a soundstage or if it's a. It almost looks like they shot it in, like, a. In, like, a zoo in America. Like, they went to, like, the. A zoo that had, like, a. This, you know, like, where they have, like, their. Their animals from India. They have, like, a big, like, water feature with, like, a. Yeah. What you would call it. Head coming out of the water. Like this big Hindu statue coming out of the water. And they're just like, yeah, this is India. It's kind of what it felt like.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker B: But when her dad gives her the doll before he leaves her at school, and he says, when you hug her, you'll be getting a. For me. I thought that was really sweet.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker B: And I also liked the addition of the locket. The doll is from the book. The locket is not from the book. That's a movie invention. The book also pretty much ignores Sarah's mother. We don't really ever talk about her. So I thought that was also a sweet addition. I liked the moments where the narrative was interweaving Sarah's story with. With her father on the European front in the war. I liked the added details of Ms. Minchin specifically taking her locket.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker B: And then Sarah drawing a circle of safety on the floor.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker A: Which came from the story.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker B: Which came from the story at the very beginning.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker B: There's this whole element in the book of this family that also lives on their street with. That has a bunch of kids that Sarah watches them, and she calls them the large family because there's many members of this family. And she kind of, like, has invented this whole backstory for them when she's working as a servant and, like, likes to, like, imagine, like, what they're doing with each other. And I was fine with the movie leaving that out. It's nice in the book, but it was not necessary to the plot I thought the movie really neatly tied together. The little boy handing Sarah some money, which does happen in the book. And then that kind of segues right into her buying the food and then immediately giving it away to someone who's way worse off than her.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker B: In the book, those are two different scenes. The scene where she gets handed money from somebody, and then when she buys the food, she actually finds money on the ground, like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory style.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker B: So I thought that was a good way to kind of, like, butt those two things up together.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker B: I really liked the scene where the other girls band together to break in. Yeah. Their little heist scene where they break into Ms. Minchin's office and try to find her locket for her.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker A: Yeah. It was fun.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker B: I particularly liked when Becky screamed.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker B: She just screams. Like, screams.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker A: And then Ms. Minchin just looks at her and she just stands there for a second and goes. And she's like. And she's like, I think I saw a mouse. This is good.
• 1:06:55
  Speaker B: Another little moment that I really liked was after the whole feast and everything appears in the attic room. They're, like, trying to figure out where it could have possibly come from. And Becky's like, well, I'm scared. And Sarah's like, do you think we shouldn't eat it? And Becky says, I'm not that scared.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker A: Scared. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker B: And I also really liked that Captain Crew just adopts Becky at the end of the movie. At the end of the book, Sarah does take Becky with her, but this should be her, like, lady in waiting.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker A: Oh, come on.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker B: That was where the class consciousness part really fell apart for me. I was like, oh, okay.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker A: It's pure luck that you're there and I'm here. But we're gonna keep it that way. Let's. I mean, let's be real. We should keep it that way.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker B: I mean, I. I guess it's better than being the scullery maid at Miss Minchin School.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker A: It's a step up.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker B: It's a step up. But it's still like, okay, all right.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker A: You are still the servant class. Let's keep that straight. All right, let's go ahead and talk about a couple things that the movie nailed. As I expected.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker B: Practically perfect in every way. I just have a handful of little things here. Her father does give her Emily the doll before he leaves. And they do talk about dolls, like, moving when you're not in the room. Which I think is supposed to be sweet, but it's actually very terrifying.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker B: The initial scene where Sarah is the only One who can comfort Lottie, the really young girl at the school was pretty spot on. Pretty close to what happens in the book. Book Ermengarde does sneak up to the attic to talk with Sarah and like continue being friends with her after she becomes a servant. And Sarah does have a scene where she like imagines the whole attic is full of food and finery and is like, well, I could, I can bear living here if I pretend that it's a completely different place.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. All right. Those are some stuff the movie nailed. We're gonna get to a handful of odds and ends before the final verdict. I could not get over this whole time or especially early in the movie when we're seeing a lot more of her father. How much Liam Cunningham, a young Liam Cunningham who, for people who don't know, thing he's probably most known for now is playing Davos Seaworth in Game of Thrones. Who's Stannis's like second hand guy, I.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker B: Think the Onion pirate or whatever they call it.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker A: Onion Sailor, Onion Soldier Onion.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker B: I thought it was Onion.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker A: It's not pirate.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker B: It's not pirate.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker A: Maybe it is. It's Onion something. But yeah, he's like a sailor who works with Stannis for a long time and then ends up helping other people after Stannis dies. But that's what probably most people would know him from. But he doesn't look anything like that in this. And he looked so much like Jason Isaacs to me, it was insane. Like I couldn't get over how much he looked like Jason Isaacs. And if you don't know who Jason Isaacs is, the thing he would probably most known for a lot of people is he plays Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies. He's also the incredible villain in the Patriot movies or movies. It's a singular movie. He's been a lots of stuff obviously. But yeah, the eyes and his cheekbones and face was just so I was like, oh my God, it looks like Jace Isaacs. Which is funny because I don't think Liam Cunningham looks at all like him now. He just looks so different to me. And I think it's just because in Game of Thrones he has no hair and he has a beard and in this movie he has no beard and hair. And hair. And he's also just, he's like lighter and he's obviously, you know, 30 years younger or whatever, but he just looks so different. It's fascinating.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker B: We'll have to keep an eye on Jason Isaacs and see if he looks like I Don't know if I've ever.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker A: Seen Jason Isaacs with a beard. That would be older. Yeah. I need to see what he. Especially want to see what he looks like with a beard. I don't think I've ever seen it. He always goes clean shaving because he's got those cheekbones and he's got. Yeah.
• 1:11:01
  Speaker B: I mean, yeah.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker A: There was an edit in one scene in this movie and a couple edits that were so perplexing to me that I was. I don't know. And it's in the scene where right before he goes, he's leaving her and they're sitting in the window sill at the thing, the camera. There's this moment where the camera is like in a big wide. And they're sitting in the window. And as they're having a conversation, we fade. Fade to black and then fade into a tighter close up. And I literally didn't clock that. I literally think they might have been just disguising a jump cut. I don't know. I would have to rewatch again. But then they do it a couple more times where we, like, fade in and out during the conversation, which generally that fade in and out would denote a passage of time, is usually what you're depicting with that kind of fade. And especially a fade to black and then a fade back. But in this instance, that's. I don't think that's what's happening, but maybe it is. Maybe it is supposed to denote that they've been sitting there for like a while. I don't know. I found it very strange. I have no idea.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker B: I don't remember that. I would have to watch that scene.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker A: I would have to show you again because there's a particular. The very first moment it happens, it is a jump cut. We fade from a. A, like a wide shot to, like, a slightly closer medium shot, which a jump cut is when. Can be a lot of things. But one of the things that jump cut is. Is when you're framing. I think I've explained this before, but when the frame. When you cut from one shot to a second shot, if the framing is too similar, it's different, but similar enough. You get what that is. One version of a jump cut. And it's very jarring because you're like, wait a second. We just. We changed, but we didn't really change. And it just doesn't feel right, like in the language of movies. And so you always want to. When you're cutting from shadows out, you always want to make sure your camera is moving and there are rules about this that I don't know. But like enough. And your frame is changing enough. And a lot of it's by feel anyways. I say there are rules, there are rules, but they're all rules governed by how it feels. And so if you can do it and make it feel fine, it's fine. But generally you want to move the camera and. Enough. And so it was just. I didn't know what was happening there. And then when it fades out and it's this fade and I'm like, what is. I don't know, somebody else. If you notice that, please comment on what the heck you think was happening there. Because I thought it was very, very strange. It's the only time in the whole movie anything like that happens. The rest of the movie is meticulously crafted. So it feels like it has to be intentional. I don't know. But if it was intentional, I don't understand what we were trying to get across there.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker B: If I ever meet Alfonso Cuaron, I'm going to ask him about that.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker A: I need somebody to explain scene to me because it's. It's going to live rent free in my head because I. I do not get. And again, it very well could just be. Yeah, we didn't have the coverage we needed and we wanted to cut from that wide to a slightly closer shot. And we knew it was going to be jump cut. So we put the fade in there and then we added some more fades in some other parts to kind of make it feel like maybe a style choice. Style choice. And it was just what we did. I don't know. I don't know. I truly don't know.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker B: Speaking of Malfoy. Yeah. I thought Ms. Minchin was giving Narcissa Malfoy with her. Her severe nature and her. Her white streak and her dark hair.
• 1:14:30
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:14:30
  Speaker B: I also, I was going through her like Wikipedia and IMDb to see if she had been in anything else I'd seen.
• 1:14:39
  Speaker A: Yeah. Cuz she looks familiar.
• 1:14:39
  Speaker B: She looks familiar. And there was nothing that I had seen her in recently. I believe she was in A Hard Day's Night, which I have seen.
• 1:14:50
  Speaker A: The Beatles movie.
• 1:14:51
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:14:51
  Speaker A: Oh, okay.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker B: But speaking of that, when I was looking her up, apparently she's Eleanor Rigby.
• 1:14:59
  Speaker A: Like the one the song is.
• 1:15:00
  Speaker B: The song is named after her.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker A: Is that her actual name? Is that the actual.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker B: Her name is Eleanor. Oh, I don't. Her last name is not Rigby, but apparent. Apparently. Supposedly the song is named after that.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker A: I don't know who wrote that. If That's a Paul or a John.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker B: But I think it's a Paul.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker A: Seems like a Paul song to me, but it has that weird kind of.
• 1:15:20
  Speaker B: Yeah, it has a Paul.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker A: It has a Paul energy to it, but. Yeah, I don't know. That's interesting. Did he, like, date her or something? I don't know.
• 1:15:28
  Speaker B: I don't know.
• 1:15:29
  Speaker A: I'm realizing I don't even know what Eleanor Wrigley like. I know the song, but I don't know, like what it's about. Like, what the lyric. You know what I mean? Like, is it like a love song? Is it a. I don't actually know.
• 1:15:38
  Speaker B: I wouldn't call it a love song. Eleanor Rigby is the depressing one about the lonely people.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker A: Oh, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, I don't know. I'm interested. I would be interested to know.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker B: No, I don't know if it was like, inspired by her or if maybe he just like, they met her and liked her name. I was not doing any extra reading because I was also watching the movie. That was just something that I noticed when I was looking her up.
• 1:16:05
  Speaker A: That is super fascinating.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker B: According to Wikipedia, anyway, so, you know, take that with a grain of Internet.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker A: Speaking. This is so funny. Eleanor Rigby, we were talking about who wrote it. Credited to the Lynn McCartney songwriting partnership, the song is. Is one of only a few in which John Lennon and Paul McCartney later disputed primary authorship. Eyewitness testimony from several independent sour sources, including George Martin and Pete Schotten, I think producers or whatever, support McCartney's claim to authorship. So we nailed it. Paul McCartney wrote it. I was trying to find if there was any that was like on the Wikipedia article about what the heck it.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker B: Was on her Wikipedia article. I don't know about the. If it'll be on the songs.
• 1:16:59
  Speaker A: The name of the protagonist that McCartney initially chose was not Eleanor Rigby, but Ms. Daisy Hawkins. In 19, McCartney told Sunday Times journalist Hunter Davies how he got the idea for the song. The first few bars just came to me and I got this name in my head. Daisy Hawkings picks up the rice in the church where wedding has been. I don't know why I couldn't think of much more so I put it away for a day. Then the name Father McCartney came to me and all the lonely people, blah, blah, blah. McCartney said that the idea to call his. And this isn't a quote anymore. The idea to call his character Eleanor was possibly because of Eleanor Braun, who I assume is this actor. Yeah, the actress who starred with the beatles in their 1965 film Help. She was in Help.
• 1:17:34
  Speaker B: Oh, she was in Help.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker A: And then maybe she wasn't in A.
• 1:17:36
  Speaker B: Hard Day's Night, I don't know.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker A: And then Rigby came from the name of a store in Bristol. Rigby and Evans. So there you go.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker B: So purportedly.
• 1:17:46
  Speaker A: Yeah, but like. So she was just literally like, he. Just. The name Eleanor was like, oh, this actress that was in one of our movies. Whatever. Okay. Huh. Fascinating. So you talked. We talked about how Amelia doesn't really stand up to miss. Mention it all in the movie. There was a little scene that I thought was a really fascinating little detail to include is that at one of the dinner scenes where they're all sitting around. I think what happens is that Becky comes in and, like, somebody starts talking to her or something. And. Or it's something like that. Or maybe it's Sarah comes in.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker B: I think it was the first breakfast that Sarah's like, a serving girl.
• 1:18:26
  Speaker A: That's right. And she comes in and she's like, don't talk to her or whatever. And as the scene is ending, like, we're leaving the scene, and I think it fades out or something, but we hear the French teacher say something along the lines of, je n'a pas dacord or something. Dacort or whatever. And I was like, I think that means, like, I don't agree or something like that. And I looked it up, and that is what it means. And so I think we get a little hint of the fact that this guy is like, hey, man, what the fuck is going on here? And I thought that was a nice touch that we kind of included some element of. Of, you know, maybe that's why we.
• 1:19:02
  Speaker B: Don'T see the French teacher again after that.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, I could see that. There's a scene where her. When she's out on the street after she's a servant girl, her shawl, like, blows away and she has to go chase it down.
• 1:19:14
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:19:14
  Speaker A: And that's fine. But you can. In that scene, you can very distinctly see the fishing lines that are attached to the shawl to yank it off of her when it gets yanked. You're like, yep, those are the. That's the fishing line right there.
• 1:19:28
  Speaker B: That was actually Ram Dass's magic.
• 1:19:31
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:19:32
  Speaker B: The shawl.
• 1:19:32
  Speaker A: Yeah. He's on the roof with a fishing round. Yeah.
• 1:19:41
  Speaker B: I. The moment when Ms. Minchin comes in and she sees all the stuff in the attic and she's like, you stole it. You stole all this? I was just like, now, how possibly, ma'am? I know you're the villain, but let's be so for real. How in the world could she do that possib? Could she have gotten all of that into her attic room?
• 1:20:02
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:20:03
  Speaker B: Another little moment that I really enjoyed. We talked about how they sent four cops to arrest a 10 year old girl I love after her father regains his memory and he runs out and they like reunite. Yeah, all the cops are just standing there. They're just standing there like what I.
• 1:20:24
  Speaker A: Whatever. Yeah. They have no idea what to do though. I guess we just leave. I'm sure I mentioned earlier that this movie is gorgeous and it really is. And like I said, it makes sense. I believe I said it. Was nominated for cinematography. And the cinematographer, Emanuel Lubezki, is, like I said, one of the better working cinematographers today. Birdman, Gravity, Children of Men. His catalog of films is insane. But this one is really pretty and there's some really great moments. In particular, it was a shot that's like one of the first or most prominent shots in the trailer is that one where she like the doors in the attic get blown open and all the snow comes blowing in while she's standing there with her like, and like kind of embracing the snow or whatever and the light pouring in and the snow hitting the light. It's so pretty. There's so many shots like that throughout this movie that are just gorgeous. It is a beautifully photographed film. And then my last note was kind of on the opposite side of that is we get some great mid-90s bad CGI.
• 1:21:27
  Speaker B: Yes, but.
• 1:21:29
  Speaker A: But so in the story, when she's telling the story of Rama, we see this monster that he's fighting. And the whole world of Rama is this very like staged. It almost feels like a theatrical production kind of thing with like flat backgrounds and like very clearly like crafted sets. You know what I mean?
• 1:21:47
  Speaker B: Yeah. It's almost like theater or like a storybook kind of that kind of thing.
• 1:21:51
  Speaker A: Which is really cool and works in its own way. But I thought it was kind of funny that they. The specific style, even though the CGI for the monster thing is like bad 90s CGI, they threw enough style on it that it actually kind of works. I thought, like, it almost sells like a weird like stop motion, like paper cutout or something. Even though it's very clearly computer generated, like 3D models or whatever they have enough of. I don't know if it's like some of the textures and stuff they're using on it and maybe the way they animated it feels at least in Some of the shots I was like, it actually reads better than it looks. If I think if you were to like really like pause and like look at it and be like, oof, yeah, that looks rad. But I was kind of impressed. I was like, it kind of works. It's interesting. Which goes to show that you can, if you have the right, if you know you can take even kind of bad and mediocre CGI and if you have the right vision for it, yeah, you can do something interesting with it. It just takes a little bit of style choice. Yes, it takes an extra little bit of style choice to make that work. Before we get to the final verdict, we want to remind you can do a giant favor by hanging over Facebook, Instagram threads, Goodreads, Blue Sky. Follow us on those places. Check us out. We'd love to hear what you have to say about a little princess. We'll get your feedback. We'll talk about it on our next prequel episode in one week's time. If you also want to help us, you can head over to Apple, podcast, Spotify or anywhere else you listen to our show, drop us a five star rating, write us a nice review. That would be super appreciated. And also if you want to help us out, you can head over to patreon.com thisfilmislit support us there for 2, 5 or 15 bucks a month or really any amount. But those are the reward level amounts. Get access to different stuff at each level, including bonus content starting at the $5 level where we put out a bonus episode every month. Discussing a movie. We just put out an episode on Heather's last month. We're putting out an episode on Nightmare Before Christmas this month for December. So every, every month something different is fun. Go check those out. And at the $15 level, you get priority recommendations where there's something you would really love for us to talk about. You support us at that level and recommend it and we will add it to our queue as soon as we can get to it. The queue is pretty long, so it'll be a little bit, but we will get to it. And this was a patron request from.
• 1:24:07
  Speaker B: This was a request from Mathilde.
• 1:24:09
  Speaker A: There you go. Thank you very much. Mathilde. Appreciated that. Appreciate you supporting us and that request quest. Katie, it's time for the final verdict.
• 1:24:20
  Speaker B: Sentence fast. Verdict after. That's stupid. I hadn't seen this movie since I was little and to be honest, I'm not entirely sure if I had read the book previously or not. Kind of a 5050 shot either way. But Regardless, after consuming both as an adult, I was really struck by how the story is literally just Cinderella. Sarah starts out her life very privileged, is cast into a servant's role following the death of her father, but maintains her kindness and goodness until she's rescued from her circumstances by a knight in shining armor. And just like any other fairy tale, I'm eating it up. The movie makes some pretty big changes to its source material reveal, including changing the setting, moving the time period, and perhaps the biggest change of all, resurrecting poor, doomed Captain Crew. While I was generally fine with most of those changes, and I do think that it is a good movie for me, there are two primary elements that elevate the book over it. One is the lack of Sarah's inner monologue. The book is very introspective and it explores big ideas like passive resistance and class equality in a way that is very charmingly childlike without talking down to its reader. The second is the scope of the book. I mentioned that it takes place over the course of several years and I do think that the story and Sarah's character development benefit from having that space. Also, if I'm being totally honest, the end of the movie didn't do it for me. Me, I'm fine with her dad being alive, but the harrowing escape from roof to roof and her dad suddenly regaining his memory just in the nick of time was all a little silly to me. Both the book and the movie are cozy and nostalgic, but the book edged out the movie for me, so I'm giving this one to the book.
• 1:26:22
  Speaker A: Alright, Katie, what's next?
• 1:26:24
  Speaker B: Up next we are covering something very silly.
• 1:26:27
  Speaker A: Yes, can't wait.
• 1:26:29
  Speaker B: I am so excited. We're going to be talking about the Christmas Shoes, which is a book by Donna Van Lear and a 2002 film I believe in the vein of like a Hallmark Channel type movie from what.
• 1:26:44
  Speaker A: I know of it. Yeah, it's very much like. I think it stars Rob Lowe.
• 1:26:47
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 1:26:48
  Speaker A: But yeah, it is very much like a Hallmarky kind of Christmas movie.
• 1:26:51
  Speaker B: And yes, the book is based on the song.
• 1:26:57
  Speaker A: It's based on the song.
• 1:26:58
  Speaker B: It's based on the song. And yes, I did decide to do this solely so that I could dunk on the song. So if you're down for that, tune in for the next episode.
• 1:27:11
  Speaker A: Yeah, I. I do think this is very much going to be. If you're a good bad or bad bad fan, this may end up being an episode in vain in the vein of that because I, from what I have heard this movie is not good. And not only not good, kind of like offensive in its message. Like the message. That's what I have heard. At least I say offensive that its message is bad and shitty.
• 1:27:32
  Speaker B: I mean the message of the song is bad.
• 1:27:34
  Speaker A: I don't know. I truly don't really even know the song. I don't know anything about the song. I couldn't even tell you. I don't know if I've ever heard it. I'm sure I have, but it's not a Christmas song that I ever think about or like know the lyrics too. So I'm very excited to check it out and see if it is as bad as I have heard because that'll be a fun different I am an.
• 1:27:53
  Speaker B: Extremely passionate hater of the Christmas Shoes song.
• 1:27:57
  Speaker A: So we get it. You can call out for that Christmas episode, come back in two weeks time for that and but in one week's time we'll be previewing the Christmas Shoes and getting all of your feedback on A Little Princess. Yes. Can't wait to do it. Until that time, guys, gals, non binary.
• 1:28:13
  Speaker B: Pals and everybody else keep reading books, watching movies and keep being awesome.