From Page to Screen / Vom Buch zum Film. Группа авторов
coming from the rest of the students. Trunchbull’s reaction in the book is taking the empty plate and crashing it on top of Bruce’s head. In the film, it is him who takes the empty plate and raises it up as a trophy, albeit Miss Trunchbull also ends up crashing the plate on his head. In addition, all students are compelled to spend five more hours at school copying the dictionary as a retribution for this collective offence.
In addition, Matilda also takes action against Trunchbull due to her wicked behavior towards Miss Honey in the past. Miss Honey is Miss Trunchbull’s niece, but when her father died, Trunchbull kept Miss Honey’s inheritance and threw her out of her own house. The method to make Miss Trunchbull pay for her bad behavior is different from the strategies Matilda used against her father. This time, she would react against adults’ abuse of power through magic.
This element plays a key role in Dahl’s story. A superheroine with the power of telekinesis which she uses only to face the adults’ mischievous actions is quite attractive for children, and at the same time it acts as the element for the final catharsis. Children’s stories and fairy tales have this as one of their main traits. As Sendak (1989: 151) proposed, “it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming the wild things”. In Matilda, it is through the use of magic that readers get catharsis, especially when Matilda finally reestablishes order at the end of the story by using her magical power to get rid of “the wild thing” epitomized by Miss Trunchbull.
At this point, it is worth mentioning that the use and treatment of the magic element is one of the most salient differences between the book and the film adaptation. Indeed, magic and its effects are more emphasized in the film, probably to adapt better to the expectations of family film spectators. Magic (at least the kind of magic that permeates Matilda) tends to imply “action”, and action is a mechanism to fast-track the pace of the events happening on the screen. Matilda’s magical element is thus a potential center of attraction and entertainment for the audience, especially for children, which is probably the reason why it has been fostered in the motion picture. By contrasting the book and the film, we can clearly see the latter includes more scenes concerning magic than the former.
If we delve into the use of supernatural powers in the book, we can observe it is the rage that Matilda feels after seeing an injustice or being treated unfairly what gives her the power of telekinesis. Her magic only appears as a source of power to defeat the adults that are attacking her or other disempowered characters such as Miss Honey or other children, but she never uses it to attack her parents or for any other purpose. The reader’s first encounter with magic happens in the chapter entitled “The First Miracle” when Lavender, a girl in Matilda’s class, puts a newt in Miss Trunchbull’s glass of water. In order to frighten the headmistress, Matilda tumbles the glass with the power of her eyes and the newt jumps into Miss Trunchbull’s clothes. There is a “second miracle” when Matilda is able to show Miss Honey the power she has in her eyes, and a third one when she moves a chalk with her power and writes a message on the board for Miss Trunchbull. In this case, Matilda wants Miss Trunchbull to believe that the one who is writing is the ghost of Miss Honey’s father, and that he will come to haunt her if she does not do as he says. Because of the content of the message, Miss Trunchbull believes it is him, so she gets terribly scared and flees. It is in this way that she is finally defeated: Miss Trunchbull never comes back to school and Miss Honey gets back the inheritance her aunt unabashedly took from her.
For its part, the film also features the scenes in which Matilda uses her supernatural abilities on the glass of water with the newt and the flying chalk that writes the message on the blackboard, but there are more episodes where magic becomes the protagonist. Actually, the first time we encounter Matilda’s magic powers in the film is early in the story, when her father forces her to watch TV. Being books Matilda’s main source of happiness, it is when her father gets angry because he sees her reading instead of watching TV that we get the first hint of Matilda’s magical powers. As she enrages because of her father’s act of keeping her head towards the television, the TV explodes. It is through the narrator that the connection between Matilda’s rage and the use of magic powers is introduced: “Was it magic or coincidence? She didn’t know. It is said that we humans use only a tiny portion of our brains. Matilda might never have discovered her own great strength of mind [zoom to Matilda’s eyes] were it not for the events that began the very next day” (DeVito et al., De Vito, 1996: 21:37).
Additionally, the last scene in the class is longer in the film and, with the help of magic, Matilda not only writes the message on the board but also throws the board rubbers to Miss Trunchbull, and makes her fly all over the classroom and out to the corridors so that the other children can throw food at her and see she has been defeated. What is more, Matilda also uses magic against the Trunchbull to scare her when she breaks into her house and changes objects from their places and takes things out of the house like some chocolates or Miss Honey’s doll.
Contrary to what happens in the book, Matilda also uses her telekinetic power against characters other than Trunchbull. There are two clear examples that can help illustrate this point. The first is the scene where Matilda’s brother is throwing things at her and making fun of it. At that moment, Matilda looks directly at a carrot and sends it flying directly to his brother’s mouth. The second is related with the incident with the FBI agents who are registering the garage with no court order. When Matilda tells them what they are doing is illegal, they ignore her and so she stares at their car and makes it go down the street. Apart from foregrounding the role of magic, these decisions also add new touches of humor to the movie, something probably aimed at attuning it to the expectations of a family audience.
But not only does Matilda use her power to react against adults’ misdeeds. In the film, magic is, in a way, part of Matilda’s daily habits. As any other child would do with a regular toy, we can see her playing and having fun with magic when she is on her own at home as in the scene where she moves the objects in the living room all around with her eyes while dancing. Similarly, she uses it to make her life easier, as when she moves her school bag with her eyes from a cupboard to her hand or draws the curtains from the sofa. Therefore, there is a clear bond between humor, joy and magic in the movie whereas in the book, it is presented only as a tool to fight against the oppression of the powerful adults who cannot be defeated otherwise.
This fact resonates with the presence of the magic element at the end of the story. In the book, magic disappears when everything is settled. Once Miss Trunchbull is defeated, Matilda feels safe and she is happy at school and visiting Miss Honey after her daily lessons; that is why, some weeks later, she tries to move something and realizes that she has lost her power. However, in the film, her magic does not disappear: in the last scene, we are told that “she didn’t have to use her powers again. Well, almost never” (DeVito et al., De Vito, 1996: 32:06) while we see Matilda moving a book from the shelf from bed. In addition to foregrounding the relevance of magic, this detail – in conjunction with the scene of the adoption papers – helps build a more promising and brighter ending than the one in the book, with the little girl and Miss Honey standing in the middle of the road as Matilda’s family disappears in the distance in their car. Even if the end of the story is a happy one in both cases, this made-in-Hollywood finale veils the slight melancholy and bitterness of Dahl’s description as it seeks to leave a good taste in the audience’s mouth, a decision that probably fits in better with the type of ending we expect from a family film.
4.2.4 Matilda: A heroine or a villain?
Matilda’s outstanding features (both magical and mundane) and intellect, together with her adamant stand against adults’ oppression have turned her into one of Dahl’s greatest heroines (West, 1992: 90). However, this apparently obvious assertion has been challenged by scholars like Petzold (1992: 185–191), who states that Dahl’s unconditional siding with children seems to foster their most harmful instincts as it undermines natural parental authority, or Hunt (2001: 57), who claims that the driving forces behind most of Dahl’s protagonists (including Matilda) are hate, violence, and a taste for callousness. Under this light, their fair fight would be overshadowed by a relentless and sometimes gratuitous thirst for revenge. If we were to accept this train of thought, certain passages and attitudes in the book