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Written by Mandroid3000
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FINDING NEVERLAND
*** out of *****
Genres
2004
Directed by
Marc Forster
Written by
Allan Knee (play)
David Magee
Cast
Johnny Depp .... Sir James Matthew Barrie
Kate Winslet .... Sylvia Llewelyn Davies
Julie Christie .... Mrs. Emma du Maurier
Radha Mitchell .... Mary Ansell Barrie
Dustin Hoffman .... Charles Frohman
Freddie Highmore .... Peter Llewelyn Davies
Joe Prospero .... Jack Llewelyn Davies
Nick Roud .... George Llewelyn Davies
Luke Spill .... Michael Llewelyn Davies
Finding Neverland is about the period in James Barrie’s life when he wrote the play Peter Pan. It details his relationship with the widower Sylvia Llwewlyn Davies and her four sons, and the inspiration it gives him. It also covers his own marriage break-up and not always successful playwriting career. It’s a story about finding the balance between imagination and reality, and how imagination can, at times, be a way to hide from the world.
James meets the Llwewlyn Davies family one afternoon while writing in the park. One of them is hiding under his bench as a prisoner in a game with his brothers. James joins in and meets Sylvia. Slowly he’s drawn to her and the boys and starts spending more and more time with them. Having no children of his own, he spends hours playing cowboys and indians, and pirates with them. Through these games he starts developing ideas that would become Peter Pan.
What Sylvia really wants is to shield her boys from more harm after her husband’s death, something that James seems to provide. This desire to be divorced from reality means she pays little attention to the gossip surrounding them, and is determined to play down a serious illness of her own. When her mother, Emma du Maurier, steps in to bring control to the household, James finds himself an unwelcome guest.
Almost necessarily, James Barrie’s wife Mary is the opposite of Sylvia. Cold, unimaginative, and only interested in social climbing. It’s no surprise that the two of them don’t get along. It was a surprise that the film dragged their marriage on for so long. There was no point where they seemed to like each other, so the numerous scenes of them discussing their marital problems seemed like padding. This wasn’t a marriage disintegrating despite the husband and wife’s best efforts to keep it alive, it was a cadaver from the first frame of the film.
Some of the dialogue was of a type that is getting depressingly familiar. Usually they came in dramatic scenes, often heart-to-heart talks. There’s a lot in here that are established clichés, despite no one being keen on them in the first place. There are some scenes that soar. But too often there are scenes that are set-up well, in terms of character’s development and motivation, that just dies because of flat dialogue.
While in certain scenes Finding Neverland is quite moving, in others it felt slightly manipulative. This isn’t the masterpiece that some people are claiming, it’s a competent, unsurprising drama that tries to elicit tears from the audience a few too many times. I have trouble felling any enthusiasm for this movie. I was there, it screened, it’s over. Next.
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