Finding Neverland

I finally got around to seeing this movie on dvd, and while it doesn’t rank in my top 5 like it did at the Oscars last year, this is an affecting and occasionally inspiring movie about creativity, hope and vitality in the face of, well, life. The first (and still best) Johnny Depp/Freddie Highmore collaboration utilizes the standard Miramax biopic formula to tell the story of J.M. Barrie, but the actors and director Marc Forster (Monster’s Ball) keep it from succumbing to overt tear-jerker status.

It was a bit odd to have seen this after Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, particularly because of how much little Freddie Highmore grew up between pictures. The real oddity, though, was the sense of creativity and child-like wonder, missing from Charlie, that buoyed an otherwise familiar story of loss. While overly affected in his performance as Willy Wonka, here Johnny Depp, as Barrie, is a marvel for his humanity and hopeful nature. The perpetually angelic Kate Winslet, too, is a model of restraint as Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, the ill-fated mother of four boys befriended by the inquisitive and longing J.M. Barrie.

Their paths cross by chance one afternoon at the park, and from that point on they are inseparable. Barrie takes particular interest in young Peter (Freddie Highmore, in one of the best child-actor performances I’ve seen in ages), who is still struggling with the loss of his father. Barrie takes inspiration from the boys as they play cowboys and indians, pirates and more. Forster does a great job of drifting quickly between the fantasy and reality of these play time sequences. All this fun, though, comes at a cost. Barrie is losing his wife to indifference (and eventually to another man), while friends and onlookers wonder what a married man is doing playing all day long with four little boys.

In addition, Barrie’s most recent play was an instant flop, and he is under pressure to come up with another hit to satisfy his producer, Charles Frohman (Dustin Hoffman). In his time with the boys and their mother, he finds his story. It’s fun seeing the seeds of creation for the story that becomes Peter Pan, from the kids jumping on the beds to the pirates and indians. While it could have gotten a little too gimmicky, Forster holds everything to mere glimpses, and even those fantasy sequences are subtle enough to not take away from the true conflict of the movie.

Peter, forever reluctant to join in the fun, is Barrie’s muse. Sure, he has fallen in love with Peter’s mother and the entirety of the family, but what drives Barries imagination and inspires him to write again is Peter’s skepticism at an age where he should still be skipping rocks and flying kites. Peter Pan is about the tragedy of having to grow up, and in this story, we see that moment of transition is different for everyone. When eldest son Jack (Joe Prospero) tells “Uncle Jim” that he doesn’t want his grandmother bothering his mother anymore, Barrie recognizes this as the exact moment of lost youth. When the final tragedy strikes, we realize that no matter how much we all want to be lost boys in Neverland, eventually we learn to move on. As long as we know there is a Neverland to return to, we don’t really have to ever leave it behind.

Grade: A-