Spiritual Cinema Circle
FINDING
NEVERLAND is an absolutely magical, emotional, touching, and
beautiful film for the entire family this Holiday Season. While it's not a
Christmas film per se, its heart is so full of love and enchantment that it
illuminates the spirit of humanity and hope which so many of us yearn for in
movies during this magical time of the year.
The film is set in 1903
London and is loosely based on the true story of how James Barrie found and was
inspired to write and initially stage the immortal PETER PAN. Not in recent
memory has a film been so exquisitely titled that its very name defines both the
journey of every character and also the very soul of the film's multi-leveled
essence.
Johnny Depp charmingly and
lovingly plays Barrie as a man who knows that there is a unique place in his own
heart -- and in the hearts of people everywhere -- where belief in magic is
eternal. A place he calls Neverland. Depp's Barrie is a man so deeply in touch
with his own inner child that it actually threatens his relationship with both
his producer and his wife; nevertheless, Barrie presses on with his quest to
manifest a piece of literary art that would change the face of theater forever.
The stirring musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber (whose PHANTOM OF THE OPERA is also
coming as a film this month) might never have seen the light of a London stage
if Barrie had not been so devoted to creating Neverland for his
audience.
The exquisite Kate Winslett
plays widowed mother Sylvia Davies whom Barrie encounters in a park one day in
the company of her four young boys. Sylvia herself is seeking a way to find a
sense of adventure for her young sons that will help them heal their sorrow over
the death of their father, and Barrie introduces her to his own vision of
Neverland, to which she is inexorably drawn for her own secret reasons. In turn,
Barrie is enchanted by Sylvia and her sense of love and openness which seems so
different from the chasm that has opened between Barrie and his own wife.
(Please permit me a slight digression here to just say that I am always beyond
delighted to see Winslett on screen for many reasons. Most keenly, as a father
of four young women in an age of media-inspired eating disorders, I think Ms.
Winslett is a fantastic role model of a beautiful and talented woman who is
blithely committed to NOT having to fit into a size 0 dress!)
The boys themselves are also in their own search for Neverland as they wrestle with their senses of abandonment and grief and it is here that the film finds the depth of its soul. Barrie introduces the boys (the youngest of whom is named Peter) to a world of play and imagination that not only begins to ease their mourning but also engenders in all of them the sense of their own potential as human beings. Barrie found his inspiration for Peter Pan and the Lost Boys with these four young men and it is just dazzling to watch the magic unfold. Loving, heartfelt, and
lyrically beautiful, FINDING NEVERLAND is the kind of film that "they don't make
any more." Just like the audiences who have seen PETER PAN over the last
century, it allows and indeed encourages all of us to feel better about and even
deeply proud of our own humanity. When a film does that, it touches the face of
the ultimate expression of the art form itself and we are offered a glimpse of
our own estimable beauty as a species.
With love to everyone in this Holiday Season. Stephen Simon
http://www.ihearnow.com/cinema |
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