Matilda is a 1996 fantasy film directed by Danny DeVito. It is based on Roald Dahl's children's novel. The film was released by TriStar Pictures.
Synopsis
Right from birth, Matilda Wormwood (Mara Wilson) differed from the rest of her family; she showed remarkable intelligence and creativity, and she loved reading from an early age. Her parents and older brother (Brian Levinson), however, are shown to be incredibly cruel and morally-corrupt people: Her father, Harry (Danny DeVito), sells used cars for unfair prices while her mother, Zinnia (Rhea Perlman), is unemployed and spends her days playing bingo. Her parents neglect her and disapprove of her behavior. Her father punishes her by sending her to her room simply for being smart.
Matilda begs to go to school, and when her father sells a 1970 Buick Electra 225 to the practical principal Agatha Trunchbull (Pam Ferris), an ex-Olympic athlete, he enlists Matilda at her school. Matilda is enrolled at Crunchem Hall Elementary School, where children are terrorized by Miss Trunchbull. Matilda learns about her acts of terrorism from her new friends Hortensia (Kira Spencer Hesser) and Lavender (Kiami Davael). Her most horrible punishment is "the chokey", an Iron maiden Torture Device like closet lined with nails and shards of glass the students are forced to stand in. The parents of the children refuse to believe their children's stories, and nothing is done.
To Matilda's relief, her teacher, Miss Jennifer Honey (Embeth Davidtz), is a kind and caring woman who loves her students. On her first day, Matilda displays her remarkable intelligence by solving a very complex multiplication problem in her head, and Miss Honey is amazed by Matilda's knowledge. She attempts to appeal to Miss Trunchbull and Matilda's parents, but they refuse to listen. When the car Matilda's father sold to Miss Agatha Trunchbull is revealed to be a wreck, she locks Matilda in the chokey, and Matilda is freed by Miss Honey. Later, Miss Honey takes Matilda to her home, passing Miss Trunchbull's home on the way, where Matilda notices a swing in the front yard. Miss Honey then tells her a story of a young girl who who lost her mother when she was only two and her father when she was only five.
In between the two tragedies, the mother's stepsister came to live with them. Describing a very cruel person, Matilda realizes Miss Honey is talking about Miss Trunchbull. The girl lived with her aunt once her father died, but eventually bought a small cottage and moved out. Matilda recognizes Miss Honey's house as the cottage from her story, and realizes that the girl in Miss Honey's story is Miss Honey herself, and that Miss Trunchbull is Miss Honey's aunt. Miss Honey explains she was forced to leave all her dearest possessions behind when she left her aunt's home, including a doll named Lissy that her mother gave her. They later spy on Miss Trunchbull in her house, where she is terrified by a black cat - Miss Honey explains that Miss Trunchbull is very superstitious.
Around this time, Matilda learns that she has telekinetic powers, a gift she can use to turn the tables on all the wicked grown-ups in her life. Realizing she had previously used her powers without knowing it, she practices and develops control over them. Matilda then decides to use them to teach Miss Trunchbull a lesson. Matilda goes to Miss Trunchbull's house where she uses her powers to get Miss Honey's Lissy doll and chocolates from her father's box. Matilda then uses her powers to terrorize Miss Trunchbull, culminating with her turning the clock hands to midnight, and ripping Miss Trunchbull's portrait off the wall and into the fireplace, replacing it with that of Miss Honey's father Magnus. Because she thinks that he's a ghost, a terrified Miss Trunchbull flees from the house, but notices Matilda's hair ribbon tangled around the car's window lock, and becomes suspicious of the eerie events that took place.
At school the next day, Matilda gives Miss Honey her doll and demonstrates her powers to her. Miss Trunchbull arrives, and tells Miss Honey she will be teaching her class. Miss Trunchbull orders the class to stand at the front of the room and holds up Matilda's ribbon, asking who it belongs to before throwing it to the floor and spitting on it when no one comes forward. In spite of this, Miss Trunchball seems to be fully aware that the ribbon is, in fact, Matilda's. Miss Honey tries to defend Matilda, but ends up revealing her secret to the whole class by calling Miss Trunchbull "Aunt Trunchbull". Matilda then puts her plan into action. While the other children are reading, she uses her powers to levitate a piece of chalk and writes a ghostly message on the blackboard supposedly from Miss Honey's father, accusing her of killing him. It says, "Agatha, this is Magnus. Give my little bumblebee her house and her money. Then get out of town. If you don't, I will get you. I will get you like you got me. That is a promise."
Matilda again uses her powers to scare Miss Trunchbull, and the rest of the children in the school grab their lunch boxes, and pelt Miss Trunchbull with the contents. Miss Trunchbull flees from the school, quickly gets in her car and drives off, and is never heard from again. Miss Honey is made the new principal of Crunchem Hall and moves back into her father's house, where Matilda is a frequent guest. The Wormwoods are forced to flee the country and move to Guam when the law catches onto Harry's dodgy dealings, but Matilda refuses to go. When Miss Honey protests, Matilda produces a set of adoption papers which she Xeroxed from a library book, and tells her parents to sign them. Zinnia and Harry first refuse, but the two do so when Zinnia realizes that Matilda would be better off staying with Ms. Honey in a rare moment of empathy. Her family flees, leaving Matilda to live happily with Miss Honey.
Cast
Differences From the Book
Some plot points are shortened or removed, while new details and action sequences are added.
Miss Honey's poverty is not addressed; she lives fairly comfortably in her small cottage and is not mentioned to be paying money to Mrs. Trunchbull.
In the film, Matilda is locked in The Chokey while the device is described in the novel, and in Mrs. Trunchbull's mansion she and Miss Honey undergo two expeditions with their share of narrow escapes.
Appropriately, the book goes into much greater detail about the benefits of books and even gives a list of the classical works Matilda reads. It also shows how advanced Matilda is, representing her as an excellent cook.
In the book, Matilda plays three tricks on her parent. In the movie, she only plays two tricks.
In the film, the Wormwoods go to a restaurant called "Cafe Le Ritz". They do not go out in the book.
The film is modernized and Americanized as a retelling: for instance, it takes place in the United States instead of the United Kingdom, Lavender is African-American (only being described as a "skinny little nymph" in the book), and a boy is thrown out the window for eating M&M's in a literature class instead of Liquorice Allsorts during a Bible study class.
Smaller changes are those of ages, TV programs and the like, and Matilda's brother is turned from a more-or-less ordinary boy to a bullying child, while their mother shows some humanity by giving her daughter away because she's better suited for a life with Miss Honey - but "some" only compared to the book, where both parents drop their daughter like a rock. Trunchbull's violence to children is also slightly mitigated. When Miss Trunchbull hurls a pigtailed girl over the fence, the girl lands safely gathering flowers (which she gives to Miss Honey) in the film. In the book, she bounces three times but ultimately trots back to the playground.
There are also some changes in characters' motivations; for example, in the book, Matilda's pranks against her father is purely done as revenge. In the movie she gets the idea after he tells her that "when a person is bad, that person has to be taught a lesson" and interprets this as justification for "punishing" her parents—"but only when they deserve it", as the narrator points out. Also, in the book, Matilda's father destroys the library book "The Red Pony" by John Steinbeck out of pure mean-spiritedness (and the fact that he thinks American authors are morally bankrupt), while in the movie the book is "Moby Dick" by Herman Melville, and his reasons for destroying it is that he thinks it's a "filthy" book based on the title.
The sub-plot about Mr. Wormwood's shady deals landing him in trouble with the police is hardly mentioned at all in the book (it only comes up at the very end), but in the movie this plot thread is expanded and built upon, with Matilda noticing the two FBI agents spying on them and repeatedly tries to tell her family without any of them believing her by saying that they're cops, with her parents insisting that they are Ace power boat salesmen. She even comes into direct confrontation with the two agents on one occasion, using her newfound powers to stop them from searching the family garage for stolen car parts, hence buying her father a little more time.
Miss Honey's story about her childhood remains more or less the same, although in the book she says from the get-go that it's about her, while in the movie, she starts out by saying it's about a girl she knew. Also, the nickname her father gave her is altered—in the book, he just called her "Jenny," while in the movie he called her "my little bumblebee."
At the end of the movie, Miss Honey is made the principal of the school after Miss Trunchbull vanishes; in the book, the job goes to Mr. Trilby, the sympathetic "Deputy Head" (who only has a very minor role in the book and doesn't appear at all in the movie).
The most significant divergence, however, is that Matilda's powers are treated more as a conventional superpower and less as a miracle. The film and book both have her start by inadvertent, tiny movements (an exploding cathode ray tube aside), but in the film Matilda eventually goes on to lift and control child-sized objects, and to throw multiple small ones around at will, which is unlike the book where it takes much more practice and thought before she can master her powers. The final confrontation with Trunchbull turns into a match of overt physical force versus mental powers, powers she retains to use for trivialities. In contrast, characters in the book never lose their sense of awe and a degree of fear about dealing with forces larger than human. In the book, Matilda's triumph is moving a piece of chalk well enough to write a few dozen words, at the cost of considerable drain to herself, and she loses her abilities afterward. In the film, Matilda still has her powers in the end, but only uses them for trivial matters (such as getting books off shelves).
Special Effects
- According to a featurette on the Special Edition DVD, Danny DeVito states that the chalk scene near the end of the movie was his favorite part of making the movie and explained that inside the chalk was a strong magnet and on the other side of the blackboard was another crew member writing backwards.
Awards
Wins
- YoungStar Awards
- Best Performance by a Young Actress in a Comedy Film - Mara Wilson
Nominations
- Young Artist Award
- Best Performance in a Feature Film - Leading Young Actress (Mara Wilson)
- Best Performance in a Feature Film - Supporting Young Actress (Kira Spencer Hesser)
Music
Only two songs were featured in the movie. One of them, Send Me On My Way, was played twice: when 4 1/2-year old Matilda was left alone at her house, making pancakes, and at the end of the film, set to a montage of Matilda and Miss Honey playing at Miss Trunchbull's former house. The film's score was composed by David Newman, however it was not commercially released until 2008, nearly 12 years later. The release was also a limited edition, now sold out.
External links
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Works by Roald Dahl |
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Adult short story
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