Movie · Netflix · 1996
Matilda
A child who ought to be protected, and mostly protects herself. The book is the good. The revenge is the extra.
Matilda is a true picture of a child failed by her parents and a false picture of what she should do about the headmistress. The library is the honorable part. The telekinetic revenge is the part a child will practice in imagination. Watch it with an older child if you watch it, and separate the two. Being unseen at home is a real wound. Being able to humiliate an adult is not the cure the film thinks it is, until the last scene, when a teacher adopts her. Prefer the last scene to the tricks.
The eight
Industry
4/10
She reads. Reading is the one discipline the film respects without joking.
Household
3/10
The parents are a warning, not a joke the film can leave alone. The teacher is the adult who finally acts as one.
Piety
3/10
Books are the nearest thing to reverence.
Courage
6/10
She stands up to a bully who runs a school. She also punishes, and the film likes the punishment.
Republic
4/10
A school that is a tyranny. The remedy is one good teacher, not a reform.
Temperance
4/10
Cruelty is the villain and, too often, the entertainment.
Truth
6/10
The parents are accurately small. The girl is not sentimentalized into sweetness.
Stewardship
6/10
What she is handed, at last, is a house with the right adult in it.
Live historicallyTalk about Miss Honey, not about the powers.