PLOT: Through play and innocent friendship, the Llewelyn Davies family brings out the best in Scottish author J.M. Barrie, inspiring him to create the Peter Pan stage play in 1904.
Part fiction, a lot of it fact, all of it inspired, Finding Neverland is a tragi-comic tale of how Scottish author J.M. Barrie came to write Peter Pan.
The film is elevated through another excellent performance from Johnny Depp, one of the great American actors of his generation. Stripping himself of the eccentricities that earned him an Oscar nom for Pirates Of The Caribbean, Depp plays Barrie with a delicacy and intelligence that is just as effective and just as worthy of attention from Academy Award voters. The trick is that the new work is not as obvious, nor should it be. Even the flash of doing a light Scottish accent is underplayed by Depp.
As for the story, genius does not happen by accident. Barrie's genius was his ability to infuse his legendary 1904 stage play with the sense of playfulness, whimsy and flights of imagination that he gained from his innocent friendships with the boys in the star-crossed Llewelyn Davies family.
As shown in the enchanting film, there is a widow Sylvia (Kate Winslet), a shrewish grandmother (Julie Christie) and four engaging sons, including the fragile Peter (Freddie Highmore).
Despite his youth, the saucer-eyed Highmore gives the film its other extraordinarily complex performance. He embodies the fractured nature of Peter and brings us to tears without ever staining a scene with false sentimentality. Breathtaking!
Through his relationships with the boys, and despite the scandalous nature of intruding himself into a widow's household while married to another woman (Radha Mitchell), Barrie learned how young boys struggled with the nature of growing up.
As presented in the film, there is a Freudian subtext to the experience. There is also a penetrating examination of how an artist creates through both inspiration and hard work. We see and feel, in a very real sense, why Peter Pan emerged triumphant.
But in real life, the father was still alive -- Arthur Llewelyn Davies died of cancer in 1907, with his friend Barrie at his bedside throughout his illness -- and the family included five sons, two of them doomed to die young. There was also an influential nanny, Nancy Hodgson, who was eliminated from the film even though she was Nana, the dog/housekeeper in the play.
Other details in the movie are different from the facts, too, including the time frame for the events to take place. But director Marc Forster (of Monster's Ball fame) and writer David Magee (who adapted Allan Knee's imaginative play, cut to the chase and focused the movie on what was essential.
It was a wise decision. The film captures the true spirit of the experience that Barrie and the Llewelyn boys went through. There are no lies apparent in the greater truths the film explores.
Forster's deft touch, with the Edwardian period in London and with his own flights of fancy, gives Finding Neverland its enchantment. Repeatedly, yet not excessively, Forster uses fantasy squences to give a visual dimension to what Barrie and the boys are imagining. The technique is wonderfully evocative.
In the end, we do find "Neverland" in the film. The details of getting there are dark and bittersweet but the spell is cast.
(This film is rated PG)
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