New Age, Alternative,
Metaphysical Publication
Aquarius-Atlanta.com

THE MOVIE MYSTIC
By Stephen Simon

FINDING NEVERLAND

FINDING NEVERLAND is absolutely magical, emotional, touching, and beautiful. 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 on this list) 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.