Plot
Claudia is the middle child of a busy family. She is smart and responsible, often required to help her mother around the house. However, weary of the life in suburban Connecticut, she decides to find something grander. Her younger brother Jamie, along with his extensive savings from playing cards, is enlisted as her partner in crime. They run away from home to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Once they arrive, they spend their days in the museum, exploring and eavesdropping on different schools' guided tours. They hide in the bathrooms until after closing time and sleep in antique beds. While there they encounter "The Angel," a marble statue recently auctioned off by the elusive Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. The striking piece is surrounded by mystery. Many experts dispute the artist who created the work, though many suppose it to be none other than Michelangelo himself. Claudia becomes determined to solve the mystery of "The Angel." Claudia and Jamie spend most of their time in searching and researching new things about the statue.
The following day, the two notice a small mark at the base of the piece. After some research, they find that the mark was one that Michelangelo made on numerous works. Claudia disguises herself as an adult in order to make an appointment with a museum worker to inform them of their discovery. Contrary to her hopes, the official informs her that they knew of the mark but are unsure if it is authentic.
Jamie, homesick after a week away, catches a cold. Refusing to go home before they solve the mystery, Claudia suggests that they visit the statue's previous owner, Mrs. Frankweiler. She refuses to tell them directly, but does permit them to attempt to discover the answer for themselves. After leading them to a room lined from floor to ceiling with filing cabinets, she informs them that they have one hour to search for the truth. After 54 minutes of fruitless effort, Claudia uncovers the correct file. It contains a sketch of the sculpture from one of Michelangelo's notebooks, proving that he is, indeed, the creator. Finally appeased, the siblings permit Mrs. Frankweiler to drive them home.
Read more about this topic: From The Mixed-Up Files Of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (1995 Film)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“Those blessed structures, plot and rhyme—
why are they no help to me now
I want to make
something imagined, not recalled?”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“There comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)