Along with St Petersburg, Paris, Middle-earth, distant planets and Shangri-la – and I never had to leave this room. Later Meggie enters the library without permission she first alienates and then engages Elinor: she learns Elinor loves all things Persian and asks if Elinor has been to Persia. Elinor, outspoken and insensitive, tells Meggie she was abandoned by her mother. She enters the scene with the engaging exclamation, “For the love of Thomas Hardy!” She is crotchety and rich and lives in an Italian villa complete with a fabulous library. The two drive across the Alps to the home of Mo’s Aunt Elinor, played by the always-fabulous Helen Mirren. While Mo is searching an old bookshop, Meggie meets a strange man with a ferret and a scarred face who seems to know her he calls Mo “Silver Tongue.” They flee from the man and Mo indicates it has something to do with Meggie’s missing mother – it’s mysterious because Mo wants to protect his daughter from something but we don’t know what. The dark secret is that something from this world must leave to replace it – sort of a fictional version of the law of the conservation of energy.Īfter a brief glimpse of Mo, his wife and daughter as a toddler, we are brought into the present: Mo specializes in the repair of rare books and his now teen-aged daughter Meggie (Eliza Bennett) has observed that he’s always looking for a particular book and is always disappointed when he doesn’t find it. In a nutshell, Mortimer (Mo for short, played by Brendan Fraser) has the gift of a ‘silver tongue’: when he reads out loud, characters come to life and leave the world of their creation to enter ours. I did not know the source material, the German novel Inkheart by Cornelia Funke, but I wandered into the DVD store and saw this movie with a fantasy cover, I noted the fine cast and I figured it would be worth viewing – and it is, very much so.

Inkheart novel