DVD Review: The Legend Of Longwood

The Legend Of Longwood is a sweet and completely engaging film about a young girl who becomes caught up in an Irish legend involving the ghost of the Black Knight. Right from the opening, this film establishes a tone of magic and wonder, the way the light plays on the collection of objects the camera pans over, in conjunction with the score. We’re then introduced to Mickey Miller (Lucy Morton), as she rides her horse along the beach in New York with the aim of jumping over a beached rowboat, not seeing that there is a second one behind it. She screams, and the film cuts to several weeks later, when we learn that Mickey’s mother has inherited a house in rural Ireland, and is moving the family there. Mickey doesn’t want to leave New York, and is worried that her father will not be able to find them if they move.

As Mickey walks around the grounds in her new home, she hears whispering, then while in a strange clearing surrounded by large stones, she sees a man on a black horse. Later she overhears a conversation in which a woman tells the town’s mayor that she is certain she saw a man who has been dead for nearly three hundred years. “Well, he ain’t dead no more,” the woman says. We pick up snatches of information, just as Mickey does, and begin trying to piece the story together. Thus, the film quickly and firmly aligns us with Mickey, and we experience the story largely from her perspective.

She soon meets Lady Thyrza Dumonceau (played by Miriam Margolyes, whom you might recall as the Nurse in the 1996 version of Romeo And Juliet; she was also in The Black Adder), who shows her a painting of her great great great granduncle, better known as the Black Knight. She tells Mickey the story of the Black Knight. It’s all exposition, of course, but it’s presented in an interesting way – animated from drawings that Thyrza has in her manuscript. The story involves a fire, a missing daughter, seven horses, and a man whose grief changed him from a kind person into the one everyone refers to as the Black Knight. She tells Mickey that whenever the ghost of the Black Knight appears, “terrible things happen,” adding, “He will never rest until he finds his daughter.”

This film has all of the traditional elements of a child’s adventure story: the child being in an unfamiliar area, an absent or missing parent, adults unwilling to listen or believe the child’s story, and so on. All of these things are familiar, but this film manages to use them in a way that makes them feel fresh. There is also a plot involving the impending marriage of Thyrza’s grandnephew Marc to a scheming woman named Caitlin, and a mayor who wants to use the legend of the Black Knight to attract tourism to the area. While this movie is largely aimed at children, it can be enjoyed by adults as well. And that is mainly because it doesn’t talk down to its audience, but rather keeps them engaged, and keeps them thinking, which is due in part to the fairly fast pace of the film. There are also some beautiful landscapes and good performances.

Special Feature

The DVD includes a behind-the-scenes featurette, with interviews with director Lisa Mulcahy, cinematographer Richard Van Oosterhout, costume designer Susan Scott, production designer Diana Van De Vossenberg, stunt coordinator Philippe Zone, and cast members Lucy Morton, Thekla Reuten, Fiona Glascott, Lorcan Bonner, Scott Graham and Anabel Sweeney. Lucy Morton talks a bit about her experience with horses. This is approximately thirteen minutes.

The Legend Of Longwood was directed by Lisa Mulcahy, and was released on DVD on June 2, 2015 through Shout! Factory.