Miss Potter

Location: somewhere over the Pacific.
Destination: Puebla, México (via Texas).
Altitude: 33,000 ft (10,058 m)
Ground speed: 528 mph (851 k/h)
Time to destination: ~ 4 hrs.

Early in the ‘life’ of this blog we (well, mostly LK) wrote film reviews of movies we had watched at home with an occasional box-office experience thrown in.

Since we moved to Hawai’i long distance travel (meaning anything beyond what a mere mortal can paddle away from the shore) has meant using aircrafts.

With the proliferation of small digital screens on those flying machines as well as the ubiquitous presence of previously-released films being shown on the in-flight ‘entertainment’ system, a review based on said device never occurred to me as a valid source of a film worthy of a review. Say, with the 5” screen, the bad pixelation, the occasional interruption by the PA: “ladies and gentlemen, the Captain has turn on the fasten-seat-belt sign on...” which means the image gets frozen on the screen only to resume with a slight burp, the person behind kicking the back of your seat every once in a while (yes I travel coach), the heavy editing most films are subjected to and the myriad of other unrelated video images bouncing around in your peripheral vision in their full color negativity--unique to LCD displays--, who could imagine that a movie would actually capture enough of my attention to make me spend my time writing this?

Miss Potter (2006), however, seems to have enough character and Renée Zellweger (Beatrix) does such a great job so as to overcome all the other distractions I was experiencing. While I am not a Beatrix Potter scholar or even claim to have a passing knowledge of 19th century British Literature, this film portrays Beatrix Potter, the creator of Peter Rabbit, in a very engaging but not childish way.

Ok, so there are a few moments early in the film (with Ms. Potter as a young child) that could make some people’s focus stray away. But overall this film flows well, seems to be informative about Beatrix Potter’s life (with whatever accuracy the director chose to use: see my previous disclaimer regarding my knowledge of British Lit.) and is certainly well performed.

If Beatrix Potter’s life was half of what the film presents, what a fascinating person she was. If nothing else, this film does seem to show an interesting (but perhaps limited) perspective of 19th century British class struggles within the realm of upper-middle class (tradesmen) and lower high class (former tradesmen). And while the film barely develops the story of Peter Rabbit (after all, that is not its intent, and the film clearly goes under the presumption that the viewers are familiar with that tale which I’m sure is quite charming and easy to follow) it certainly made me want to read Peter’s tale and at least try and find out if Beatrix Potter had as fascinating a life as the film tries to make you believe. A good choice indeed.