Posted by Jock on June 06, 2006 at 00:10:21 from 81.76.86.2 user Jock.
In Reply to: Re: posted by Lyn on June 03, 2006 at 19:04:51:
Most of the film is spent sorting out who washes the bottles, who mends the coats, who lights the fire, who guts the fish and makes buttered eggs to go with it, who is best at what. It’s about authority and order and respect for achievement, and these children's’ heroes are the great self-reliant Victorian explorers.
I guess the film responds to a level of self-generated imaginativeness which is quietly as fantastical as Narnia or Hogwarts or Middle Earth (the lake on which they sail is actually an amalgam of Coniston, Windermere and Derwentwater, and the kids name the local capital Rio). But, still, it’s actually possible to step through this particular wardrobe.
The proximity to the Swallows and Amazons dream – their parallel universe – to the real universe, is what makes the story retain its frisson some eight decades on. The best shots in the film remain those of the boats. A brown sail and a white sail, free as birds. Out of the womb, out of the house, out of the town. To sea!
A much more sympathetic plot summary and review of the 1974 film.