Miss Potter

PREVIOUSLY: SCENES OF A SEXUAL NATURE

A British biopic released in 2006, Miss Potter chronicles the life of Beatrix Potter, author and illustrator of some of the most beloved children’s books of all time. The movie specifically focuses on her initial success and her tragic romance with her editor, Norman Warne.

It feels like it’s been forever since I’ve watched an actual good movie for this project.

Is Miss Potter a tad clichéd? Sure. It tends to follow the children’s author biopic formula: The author is a misfit who’s too imaginative for their own good. After initial disapproval, they finally win some success. Tragedy strikes, but life goes on.

However, I think Miss Potter doesn’t lean into these clichés as much as it could have. Some of these movies have full-blown, lengthy fantasy sequences, which has irked me more and more as I’ve become a cranky adult. (Looking at you, Finding Neverland.) The closest this one comes is a short shot of young Beatrix looking out her bedroom window and watching her parents climb into an illustrated pumpkin coach pulled by rabbits. The rest of the time, it’s limited to Beatrix talking to her illustrations, which often come to life for her. I wasn’t crazy about that choice, because it makes her seem, well, crazy, with how earnest she is about it. But I didn’t fully hate it.

It also didn’t do the thing where a future author witnesses something extremely on-the-nose that will later go down verbatim in their stories. Beatrix just liked being outside, drawing cute animals wearing clothes, and making up little stories about the mischief they’d get up to. It does make it clear that Beatrix actually had an imagination, you know, like a writer. So many writer biopics seem to not understand that concept.

In their defense, these kinds of movies tend to follow the same basic structure because, unfortunately, that’s how life often works. Most people, famous and successful children’s authors included, have survived the kind of heartbreak that defines the rest of their lives.

I’m no scholar on Beatrix Potter. But The Tale of Peter Rabbit is one of the first books I remember my mother reading to me. I know it was one of my favorites for a while, and I would ask for it. I remember being snuggled up against my mom, safe in my own bed, my heart pounding as Peter tried to escape Mr. McGregor’s garden. Even though there is darkness and danger present in Beatrix Potter’s works, the style of the illustrations are a comfort. Equal parts realistic, whimsical, and warm, they reassure you that nothing truly bad will happen in the story. Peter learns his lesson, but he still returns home safe at the end of it.

I don’t know if I can describe why, but this film evoked that same sort of feeling in me. I watched this while sick with a cold, and something about it was deeply comforting in a way not many movies are.

I didn’t know anything about this story ahead of time. When Norman Warne first shows up, I was worried he and Beatrix would butt heads over creative decisions and that would be a central conflict and I would get stressed over it. After all, Ewan McGregor and Renée Zellweger played the “opposites attract” romance in Down with Love, and she’s playing a fiercely independent woman writer again, surely this would be at least a little similar? Nope. I enjoyed both movies, but their characters and their dynamic in Miss Potter could not be more different. I honestly had trouble remembering I was watching the same people.

The front door opens and he walks in and he’s immediately like, “My older brothers are giving me this assignment as busy work and they want to bury you, but not me, I don’t want that, your success is my success, also I’m your number one fan and I want to preserve your creative control as much as possible, please come to my home and be best friends with my delightful sister, I love you but more importantly, I respect you.” And from what I can tell, this is basically the way he was in real life. He’s perfect??

Beatrix’s fraught relationship with her parents, particularly her mother, is the main source of conflict. But even that ends in a relatively good place. She doesn’t hold a grudge over her parents for keeping her from Norman. She and her mother have finally come to realize that they will never understand each other, and that’s all right. I fully expected a final blow-out fight, or Beatrix silently storming out without ever seeing them again. But the resolution of loving her parents while making the decision to not see them every day was, again, comforting and pleasantly surprising.

The one great tragedy in Beatrix’s life was likely the death of Norman Warne. And although much of this was fictionalized and dramatized (he did not catch his death from a cold he caught while bidding her goodbye with a first and last secret kiss in the rain at the train station,) his illness and death really were that unexpected and sudden. There was no warning, no time to say goodbye. Although Beatrix’s parents disapproved, it seemed like she and Norman truly cared about each other and would be together soon. Then he was gone.

I can’t even remember the last time I watched a biopic that made me weep like this. Even if the facts aren’t all right, it gets the emotions right.

Even though this understandably wrecks Beatrix for some time, the movie doesn’t end on this tragic note. The loss of Norman wasn’t the end of her story, not by a longshot. She realizes the success of her books has earned her enough “fuck you” money to buy her own property. She is independently wealthy and intends to be independent. She gets some much-needed distance from her parents; maintains her close friendship with Norman’s sister, Millie; eventually starts to draw and come up with stories again; preserves farmland from being bought up by developers who would destroy it; and rekindles a friendship with a man who also respects her and her work whom she will eventually marry in spite of her family’s protestations. It felt hopeful, but also like a realistic portrayal of the struggle of picking yourself back up after life-shattering grief. Even when she’s not sobbing anymore, there’s still an unmistakable sadness to Renée Zellweger’s performance for the rest of the movie. But she does start smiling again without faking it, and it’s easy to believe she arrived in a place where the good mostly outweighs the bad.

My mom always included the author’s and illustrator’s names when she read to me as a child. I grasped from an early age that another person had come up with these stories. I always liked Beatrix Potter’s name, but I never knew much about her before watching this movie. I just knew that she was published and successful in a time when that wasn’t often the case for women. That alone is enough to make her “goals.” But after watching this movie and doing a little more research about her, she is basically the personification of “goals.”

In a letter to Norman’s sister, Millie, four months after his death, Beatrix wrote: “He did not live long but fulfilled a useful happy life.” She died thirty-eight years later. I think she was probably proud that she also fulfilled a useful, happy life.

This movie managed to balance an outline of not-too-tired clichés and a lot of creative license with genuine emotion and warmth. It doesn’t end on a downer, nor does it end on a completely made-up, insincere, “happy” ending. (Looking at you, Saving Mr. Banks.) It made me believe what was probably the truth: That Beatrix Potter’s life was not perfect, but she still ended up in a really good place. After all, she eventually married a man who also talked to her illustrations like they were real. We should all be so lucky.

COMING UP NEXT: CASSANDRA’S DREAM