*** (out of ****)
Starring Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet, Radha Mitchell, Julie Christie, Dustin Hoffman, and Freddie Highmore
Directed by Marc Forster & written for the screen by David Magee, from the play by Allan Knee
2004
PG 105 min
I never thought I’d say it, but Johnny Depp is in Oscarbait. Certainly “Finding Neverland” is made well and a pleasant enough, even gentle film, filled with color, costumes, and nuanced performances by Depp and Kate Winslet. It’s also cut, directed, and scored pretty conventionally, and I heard sniffles and choked sobs from around me at all the right moments. If you have any confusion about what the movie means, you can probably catch the bit at the end where Depp explains everything on Oscar night. “Finding Neverland” is what it is, and it’s good at it.
Based on the play by Allan Knee, “Finding Neverland” uses a few years in the life of Scottish playwright J.M. Barrie to compare boyhood and manhood. Director Marc Forster examines the allure of one and the responsibilities of the other, and why each can often be the escape of the other reality. “Finding Neverland” is in many ways an acted-out literary criticism of Barrie’s great work, “Peter Pan,” but to describe the film that way is to make it sound drier than is accurate. Adulthood for Barrie (Depp) is a tedious affair of pointless social occasions, stuffy conversations, and rigid posture, all done because “it’s what people do.” Even his work as a playwright seems hopelessly shackled with having to recreate reality. Childhood, on the other hand…well, that’s a different matter.
The movie’s focus is Barrie’s relationship with a recently widowed woman (Kate Winslet) and her family he meets after one of his plays flops. He teaches them things and they teach him things, learning to balance what’s there and what’s made up. One of the boys (Freddie Highmore) refuses to be a boy; he wants nothing to do with fiction or make-believe or anything else he considers to be lies parents tell to children. Not surprisingly, Barrie’s own wife (Radha Mitchell) and the widow’s mother (Julie Christie) do not think the relationship is as chaste as Barrie claims. Barrie grumpily denounces their accusations as the stifling conformity of “adult” society.
Questions have been raised about the real-life relationship Barrie had with the widow and the boys. “Finding Neverland” does not pursue these questions, but it is strengthened by a sense of vague unease throughout. If the film were simply “grown-ups bad, kids good” it would not be up for seven Oscars. Lofty visions of adulthood are portrayed as as escape for children, just as a gauzily mis-remembered childhood is an escape for adults.
Part of being Oscarbait is for a film’s production design to go above and beyond what is strictly necessary. “Finding Neverland” could have been made for a fraction of the price for “Masterpiece Theatre” and would have been about as effective. But a big star going for a big Oscar run calls for a deeper canvas, for nicely creaking floors, for an entire London townhome instead of just a few rooms, for packed houses instead of just glimpses of a theatre audience. Glimpses of Neverland are not acted out in million dollar CG sequences, but with delightfully staged contrivance. Colors really pop out. Think “Seabiscuit.” It’s pleasant.
The centerpiece of “Finding Neverland” is, of course, Depp’s performance. The movie may be Oscarbait, but his performance is not. It is quiet, reserved, and contained, not all tics and quirks and mannerisms. He plays Barrie as a delicate, uncomfortable man, always lost in thought, and a man who became a writer more to explore his own inarticulateness than to communicate with others. When we consider that Depp has played such caricatures as Edward Scissorhands, Hunter S. Thompson, Jack Sparrow, and Ed Wood, and when we consider this film and “Donnie Brasco,” and when we consider the Peter Pan character he will be playing in the forthcoming “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” the conclusion is inevitable: the guy has range.
Finished Sunday, January 30th, 2005
Copyright © 2005 Friday & Saturday Night
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