When I think about what makes me feel good, it isn\u2019t fantasy or escapism; it\u2019s justice, morality and triumph \u2013 sizing up to a bully bigger than you and prevailing against the odds. I never fail to be charmed by the story of an underdog, someone who shouldn\u2019t win but finds a way through resilience, determination or sometimes a genius loophole and a little bit of magic, and no film hits those attributes harder for me than Danny DeVito\u2019s Matilda.<\/p>\n
The zany adaptation of Roald Dahl\u2019s 1988 children\u2019s novel came out in cinemas in December 1996, four months after I came into the world. The film, set (unlike the supremely British source text) in a leopard-print-clad edition of suburban California, focuses on the titular character (played by Mara Wilson), who grows up unseen and unheard by her grifter, TV-obsessed parents, Harry and Zinnia Wormwood, played by DeVito and his then-wife Rhea Perlman.<\/p>\n
As an infant, Matilda can write and spell her own name. Aged just four, she makes herself pancakes, locates a library in the Yellow Pages and walks 10 blocks in search of something to read while her mother goes to bingo. Her brain is ravenous, and by six and a half years old (the age her parents finally agree to send her to school), Matilda is reading Herman Melville\u2019s 1851 epic novel Moby-Dick. As the velvet-voiced narrator (also DeVito) tells us: \u201cThese books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: you are not alone.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a bookish, independent child who spent large chunks of my young life alone, I saw myself in Matilda. I grew up an only child, with half-siblings I didn\u2019t know or care for, and a father who, although he loved me, didn\u2019t entirely understand who I was and could, as a consequence, become quite hostile. Books, when we were alone, were a safe space to run to. To this day, they\u2019re still how I get out of my own head; often, they\u2019re how I fall asleep at night.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Cornelia Funke\u2019s Inkheart, Nina Bawden\u2019s The Peppermint Pig, and Michael Morpurgo\u2019s The Butterfly Lion were all examples that provided comfort. But, truly, I would read anything I could get my hands on. In one unfortunate incident, I acquired a Mills & Boon novel at a book exchange aged seven and emerged the next morning, asking my father what a virgin was.<\/p>\n
Matilda, a character with a reading age far superior to mine, taught me the reassuring steadfastness of escapism through books, the importance of kindness and the power of intellect, which manifests itself on screen as Matilda discovering that, thanks to her brimming brain, she\u2019s developed the gift of telekinesis. But she was small and mighty even before that: teaching her dad a lesson by putting peroxide in his hair oil, before gluing his porkpie hat to his head with the \u201csuper superglue\u201d he was using to stick stolen car parts on to dodgy motors.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve never felt like a particularly powerful force, as a child or an adult. But I cannot tell you how many times, after watching Matilda in those formative years, I spent staring at a glass of water, willing it to tip over with the sheer force of my mind. Outside of my imagination, telekinesis was never going to happen for me, but building up my brain to become my most powerful asset could. As a journalist, if I make a life change, even in a small way, that glass has moved.<\/p>\n
At a time when society is markedly corrupt and individualistic, the hope and bravery evident in Matilda make my heart glow. When I need to feel comforted after a particularly long day or anxiety-inducing hangover, I turn to Jean Speegle Howard\u2019s softly spoken, cardigan-clad librarian, David Newman\u2019s soaring score and the happy ending provided by Embeth Davitz\u2019s Miss Honey, who has always reminded me of my kind and clever mum.<\/p>\n
Matilda serves as a reminder that, even if the Miss Trunchbull-esque powers that be don\u2019t have the everyman\u2019s interest at heart, change can be achieved by the smallest in society with integrity and compassion. Mara Wilson, sending her headteacher running scared for the hills out of town, never fails to shake off my pessimism and reignite my belief that things will get better \u2013 that that little girl, in a floral dress with a bow in her hair, can \u2013 and will \u2013 make a difference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When I think about what makes me feel good, it isn\u2019t fantasy or escapism; it\u2019s justice, morality and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":814137,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,75,337],"class_list":["post-814136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=814136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/814137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=814136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=814136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=814136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}