A Gentleman in Moscow (2016) 2

I finished A Gentleman in Moscow yesterday afternoon. What was threatening to be the story of an insufferable aristocrat under house arrest in a grand hotel turned out to be a calming take on aging. From his sentence in 1922 to his escape in the mid-1950s, we see a man go from all-knowing to all-wondering, with many of his lessons coming from those younger. 

Given the popularity of the book, I can imagine it as a movie, which might make a case for it not being made. But I can hear the pitch:

"Dr Zhivago meets The Shawshank Redemption, with Daniel Day-Lewis or Ralph Fiennes as the Count. Only someone younger, unless we can do that facial cloning thing, like they did with the pre-slap Will Smith in Gemini Man."

The Secret Garden (1993)

Last week I picked up a copy of Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden (1909) at one of the ten thrift stores I visit (I forget which one), and on Saturday a DVD copy of the 1993 Agnieszka Holland-directed film version at the Sally Anne at East Hastings and Gilmore, which I watched last night, despite having fifty pages left in the novel.

Some differences between the two, of course. While both the book and film open in India, it is an earthquake, not typhoid, that orphans Mary in the film version. As for Master Colin's "illness", the book emphasizes a bone and muscle ailment, while the film has added concerns over his respiratory system ("spores") -- hence the masks worn by staff (while Colin and animal-whisperer Dickon proceed without).

The Secret Garden is a beloved book and many have seen the film version. Also seen in the film is a depiction of mask-wearing aligned not to health and safety but hysteria, or indeed the result of a neglected child who has been deemed ill in order to justify his confinement. We, the reader, know soon enough that Colin's illness is a sham, as do those among us who insist that the "truth" they carry allows them to enter enclosed public spaces without viral inhibiting masks.