The Secret Garden

The Secret Garden (1993) is Agnieszka Holland's family drama, and you can watch it online on iFILM. After an earthquake takes her parents in India, nine-year-old Mary Lennox is shipped off to her uncle's gloomy mansion on the Yorkshire moors.

Misselthwaite Manor gives the orphan a cold welcome. Her uncle Archibald has spent ten years grieving a dead wife and wants nothing to do with the girl, the servants move through the halls in silence, and at night someone cries somewhere in the house. Bored and prickly, Mary wanders the grounds until she finds a locked gate hiding a garden sealed off since her aunt died. With the help of a local boy named Dickon and her frail cousin Colin, she sets about coaxing the overgrown beds back to life, and more than the soil starts to heal.

This take on Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel rests on its young cast and on Maggie Smith as the stern housekeeper Mrs. Medlock. Holland keeps the sentiment in check: her Yorkshire is damp and real, which is exactly why the final bloom earns its magic. Best for anyone after a quiet film about a neglected child and a neglected garden nursing each other back to health. Stream The Secret Garden (1993) online on iFILM.