When I think about what makes me feel good, it isn’t fantasy or escapism; it’s justice, morality and triumph – sizing up to a bully bigger than you and prevailing against the odds. I never fail to be charmed by the story of an underdog, someone who shouldn’t win but finds a way through resilience, determination or sometimes a genius loophole and a little bit of magic, and no film hits those attributes harder for me than Danny DeVito’s Matilda.
The zany adaptation of Roald Dahl’s 1988 children’s novel came out in cinemas in December 1996, four months after I came into the world. The film, set (unlike the supremely British source text) in a leopard-print-clad edition of suburban California, focuses on the titular character (played by Mara Wilson), who grows up unseen and unheard by her grifter, TV-obsessed parents, Harry and Zinnia Wormwood, played by DeVito and his then-wife Rhea Perlman.
As an infant, Matilda can write and spell her own name. Aged just four, she makes herself pancakes, locates a library in the Yellow Pages and walks 10 blocks in search of something to read while her mother goes to bingo. Her brain is ravenous, and by six and a half years old (the age her parents finally agree to send her to school), Matilda is reading Herman Melville’s 1851 epic novel Moby-Dick. As the velvet-voiced narrator (also DeVito) tells us: “These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: you are not alone.”
As a bookish, independent child who spent large chunks of my young life alone, I saw myself in Matilda. I grew up an only child, with half-siblings I didn’t know or care for, and a father who, although he loved me, didn’t entirely understand who I was and could, as a consequence, become quite hostile. Books, when we were alone, were a safe space to run to. To this day, they’re still how I get out of my own head; often, they’re how I fall asleep at night.
Cornelia Funke’s Inkheart, Nina Bawden’s The Peppermint Pig, and Michael Morpurgo’s The Butterfly Lion were all examples that provided comfort. But, truly, I would read anything I could get my hands on. In one unfortunate incident, I acquired a Mills & Boon novel at a book exchange aged seven and emerged the next morning, asking my father what a virgin was.
Matilda, a character with a reading age far superior to mine, taught me the reassuring steadfastness of escapism through books, the importance of kindness and the power of intellect, which manifests itself on screen as Matilda discovering that, thanks to her brimming brain, she’s developed the gift of telekinesis. But she was small and mighty even before that: teaching her dad a lesson by putting peroxide in his hair oil, before gluing his porkpie hat to his head with the “super superglue” he was using to stick stolen car parts on to dodgy motors.
I’ve never felt like a particularly powerful force, as a child or an adult. But I cannot tell you how many times, after watching Matilda in those formative years, I spent staring at a glass of water, willing it to tip over with the sheer force of my mind. Outside of my imagination, telekinesis was never going to happen for me, but building up my brain to become my most powerful asset could. As a journalist, if I make a life change, even in a small way, that glass has moved.
At a time when society is markedly corrupt and individualistic, the hope and bravery evident in Matilda make my heart glow. When I need to feel comforted after a particularly long day or anxiety-inducing hangover, I turn to Jean Speegle Howard’s softly spoken, cardigan-clad librarian, David Newman’s soaring score and the happy ending provided by Embeth Davitz’s Miss Honey, who has always reminded me of my kind and clever mum.
Matilda serves as a reminder that, even if the Miss Trunchbull-esque powers that be don’t have the everyman’s interest at heart, change can be achieved by the smallest in society with integrity and compassion. Mara Wilson, sending her headteacher running scared for the hills out of town, never fails to shake off my pessimism and reignite my belief that things will get better – that that little girl, in a floral dress with a bow in her hair, can – and will – make a difference.
Matilda is available on Netflix in the US, Amazon Prime and Now TV in the UK and on Netflix and Amazon Prime in Australia
