Almost 30 years ago, my mom took me and my sister to see a movie that was meant to be a mild Saturday diversion, but ended up sticking with me my entire life: The Secret Garden. Produced by Francis Ford Coppola and directed by Agnieszka Holland, it was of many film adaptations of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic children’s novel (the latest adaptation being Mac Murden’s 2020 film). Out of all those films, though, Holland’s is my favorite—and rewatching it as an adult, I’m struck by how much the movie holds up.

The story is deceptively simple. Mary (Kate Maberly) is a young British girl growing up in colonial India. When her cold and unloving parents are killed in an earthquake, Mary is sent to England to live with her uncle, Lord Archibald Craven (John Lynch). Mary is a stony and difficult kid, and she finds that she’s in good company among the brooding and dysfunctional residents of Misselthwaite Manor. But then Mary makes two discoveries. The first is the key to a mysterious garden, its door hidden behind an overgrown hedge. The second is Colin (Heydon Prowse), a cousin she never knew about, who suffers from an unknown illness and has never walked or left his room.