Ryan Chartrand“There’s something quite delicious about first words. You never quite know where they’re going to take you…and mine, they took me here, where I belong.” So begins, and ends, “Miss Potter,” the biographical movie chronicling the life of Beatrix Potter, the beloved English children’s author.
At the turn of the century, Potter (played by Ren‚e Zellweger) is 32, single and attempting to break into the (at first) unreceptive world of children’s publishing with her first book, “The Tale of Peter Rabbit.”
Though the editors at the Warner Bros.’ publishing house aren’t too thrilled with the prospect of signing Potter, they are impressed enough to at least give her a chance.
But there’s one caveat, albeit one unbeknownst to Potter: The two older Warner brothers, the two who are mainly in charge of the family-run business, will pass the project on to their baby brother Norman (played by Ewan McGregor), who has just joined the family business. The idea is that, if Norman screws up the project, it won’t matter since the “bunny book” is doomed to fail anyway, at least in their eyes.
But, as anyone who has ever read the tales of Peter Rabbit, Jemima Puddle-Duck, Benjamin Bunny or any of her other beloved “friends” knows, that path was not in Potter’s future.
The storyline itself focuses on Potter’s struggles to break into the business (and to break the various social norms), her impending rise as a children’s author and illustrator, and her eventual decision to move from London to the Lake District and assume a less-demanding lifestyle.
All of this is interwoven with poignant childhood flashbacks that show a very curious and very talented young Potter. From these scenes, viewers can only assume that the real Potter had both an uncanny knack for capturing nature in all its beauty and a special talent for creatively relaying stories, and that the movie itself is not make-believe.
The beauty of this movie comes not in its plot, but in its characters and tale of this favorite author. Like her much-loved children’s stories, “Miss Potter” proves that every tale is worth telling – especially that of this imaginative storyteller herself.
What makes the movie interesting is its delicate mixture of fantasy and harsh reality and its fantastic characters that come to life on the page. The movie also does a great job of telling Potter’s own struggles against societal norms, which dictate that she must marry and leave her imagination behind, and live within the strict confines of a conventional Victorian, pseudo-aristocratic family. But she is a woman who is quite capable of holding her own – another reason why we like her so much.
“Miss Potter” isn’t an amazingly deep or thought-provoking movie. But it is charming. Anyone who has ever enjoyed one (or all) of her books as child must see where Potter’s “quite delicious” life will take her.