‘Finding Neverland’ is the play within the play within the play that is really about finding the magic at the heart of imagination. And, fittingly enough, it’s all about believing.
Johnny Depp plays J. M. Barrie, the playwright who wrote Peter Pan. It’s London, 1903. The theater is the exclusive reserve of high society: reserved people in reserved seats. Barrie has enjoyed some success, but he’d not gotten in touch with his ‘inner child’ enough to pen the story that would immortalize him. Until he met the Davies family.
The Mom (Kate Winslet) is alone with her four sons, and somewhat destitute since her husband died. Her overbearing mother (Julie Christie) provides material relief, but emotionally, she’s a dead weight. She constantly fusses about discipline and responsibility, and seriousness. As if, should there be any playfulness left in them at all, it would soon be snuffed out for lack of a belief that it was important. Sort of like Tinkerbell.
This movie fancies Mr. Barrie being inspired one summer by playing with these four Davies boys: playing Indians and pirates in the woods. Flying kites, and thinking about how, in the running start, you have to believe you can make it work, or else it won’t work. The four boys, bereft of a father, teeter on the brink of losing their boyishness prematurely, as Mr. Barrie himself did, when his older brother died when he was still a lad. Suddenly, the world seemed like a mean and cruel place that no amount of whimsy could withstand. Somehow, Mr. Barrie found in his summer with these ‘lost boys’ a way to tap into his own gentle playfulness. And the rest of us have a timeless story to be treasured with each new generation.
Of course, the story of Peter Pen is itself not without conflict, struggle, danger, and even sadness. In this movie, the boys’ Mom is ill, and as her health deteriorates, so does Mr. Barrie’s relationship with his own wife, who resents his frequent absences and can only react with jealousy and indignation. But somehow in the midst of all the personal turmoil, and maybe even because of it, Mr. Barrie manages to write the play and see it staged to a London audience rapturous with appreciation, in part, because there were children present. And it was their immediate enchantment that spread contagiously to the adults, who, in a dark theater and alone with their own sense of incomplete childhood, can let themselves go and fly to Neverland, as well.
Peter Pan solemnly declares to the audience that each time a child says that he doesn’t believe in fairies, a fairy falls to the ground. So Peter Pan encourages every child to clap to signify their belief, so that Tinkerbell can become strong again. The parallels to the Christian faith are obvious: we gain strength whenever people proclaim their faith, and we lose strength when they are ‘too grown up’ for such nonsense.
For we, too, believe in a Never, Never Land, where evil no longer holds sway, where time no longer pursues, and where vitality is eternal. And to get there, we must ride on the wings of faith, propelled by the pixie-dust of grace which allows us to be transformed.
‘Finding Neverland’ somehow manages to do better than just talk about producing magic: it actually does.
RON SALFEN is pastor of Westminster church in Dallas,Texas.
