Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Miss Potter - a play in 3 acts

The story of Beatrix Potter is fairly simple, and sadly represents the lives of many women who sought to be more than their lot allowed (think Jane Austen and the Brontes), and never married and struggled. However, our dear Miss Potter (played well by Renee Zellweger) had such an active imagination she made friends of her characters and actually saw them come to life on the page (and not metaphorically). The first act would be Miss Potter - the nutjob. She does manage to get Peter Rabbit published and enters the world of having people for friends. Ewan McGregor is her publisher and they fall in love creating a whole new world of children's literature. The second act would be Miss Potter - In love. She and Ewan are very convincing as a couple trying to get by undermining society's conventions. They are secretly engaged and send letters back and forth. However, she is alone in the third act - Miss Potter - the Conservationist. She moves to the Lake District and with the profits from her books, buys up farms to prevent them from being over-developed. She continues this throughout her life (according to Wikipedia) and keeps drawing. She left her land to the National Trust and it's still preserved today. Overall, the movie is very cute and tells a good story of beloved characters (Jemima Puddleduck, Peter Rabbit, Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottentail). Very cute, but not anything remarkable.

1 comment:

Cat said...

I wasn't sure that the animated animals and her chatting with them really did it for me, but I loved her and Ewan. They played this kind of delightful innocence and romanticism very winningly (rather than annoyingly, which would have been a danger).