I am Your Sunshine

A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett was is one of my favorite childhood read, along with Das Doppelte Lottchen by Erich Kästner, Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott, The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë and etc. I remembered when I was in elementary school. Everytime I went to the library, I’d dig out Das Doppelte Lottchen (and a picture guide of mushrooms. Mushrooms mezmerise me since I was little.) and I owned four other books at home. Those are the books I never get tired of reading, even though I can almost memorize every little detail. It’s always a pleasure to revisit the stories. All the fun, exciting, touching moments flow with black ink on the paper into my imagination. Good times.

So I checked out A Little Princess from the county library because 1) I just wanted to watch it again and 2) I wanna see if I grew to be too jaded to be touched by something that once could touch me.

It must have been over 8 years since the last time I watch the film. I found that the way I approach a movie has changed, my ability to perceive a film in a grander scale and multiple angles advanced. I’m able to appreciate it in different aspects while still feel the simple joy, the innocence and strength the story tried to convey. There were parts of the movie didn’t go as I expected (details that doesn’t really affect the storyline.) It seems that I have the book and the movie mixed in my memory. The words were branded in my mind profoundly and transformed into image and after 10 years they are still fresh and clear.

And I don’t think I was aware of how beautiful they made the movie. The entire 97 minutes were a grand gratification. If you know me well enough, you’d know that green is never my color. But in the movie, the vast deployment of green and other earthly colors made the story from head to toe fairytale-like. No wonder it was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Art Direction/Set Decoration and Best Cinematography.

I’m gonna get the DVD. =D