Peter Pan (2003)
Aug. 13th, 2004 08:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakI had some really bad news yesterday. Hopefully, it will be just Temporarily Bad With A Happy Ending, not Bad Bad, but I won't find out until Thursday next week.
Anyway, because of this, I couldn't concentrate on what I was supposed to be working on, till I gave in and watched another movie I had missed in the theatres, the most recent Peter Pan directed by P.J. Hogan. Which turned out to be a good choice. I was utterly charmed. They managed to keep what the Disney version misses out completely, the many disturbing undercurrents in J.M. Barrie going along with the Edwardian playfullness. (This also reminds me of a production of his play Dear Brutus I saw in Nottingham. Going into the woods is as risky in Barrie as it is in Sondheim.) Take the scene with the mermaids, who are beautiful but genuinely spooky and radiating malvolence.
Moreover, the problematic side of the state of eternal childhood is tackled. In the novel version by Barrie, Peter and Wendy, it's just in one scene, the epilogue, in which Peter meets an adult Wendy, and his horror at realizing she grew up, and her sadness is palpable before the dea-ex-machina in form of her daughter provides a happy ending. This scene (which one can find among the deleted scenes on the DVD) inspired a major theme in the film, as well as the one major psychological victory Hook scores - Wendy is on the brink of puberty and will grow up, and Peter will not. Choosing to remain a child forever, he also makes it impossible for himself to experience adult emotions. "You're a tragedy," Hook says, and it's as true as Peter's later retaliation.
But I'm making the film sound gloomy, which it isn't. From the moment where Wendy tells her brothers stories by acting them out, you could tell the child actors had fun, and it's shared by the audience. Jason Isaacs, playing Mr. Darling and Captain Hook both as is an English stage tradition, never goes over the top in either role. Now the man managed to make a character like Lucius Malfoy, who was always rather dull to me on the written page, into a compelling villain in the movie version of CoS, so it didn't surprise me that his Hook oozed charisma.
Speaking of Potterdom, I remember several lj discussions on the occasion of the most recent movie, PoA, about the problem of sexualisation of the child/teenage actors in fanfic and iconage. Also of the delicate but pointed way Cuaron did play on the fact the characters, at age 13 (with the actors being only a year or two older), are hitting puberty now. Since the 2003 Peter Pan is in part a coming of age story for Wendy, the great balance P.J. Hogan keeps has to be admired as well. There is no fetish-ation of child bodies, but Wendy, we're told, is twelve and soon to be 13, and looks like it. The kiss she's waiting for and finally is giving Peter is not the sexless kiss of a child anymore. In the one big (but beautifully working) departure from Barrie, it is not the goodbye kiss at the end of the adventure but a kiss that, as is traditional in fairy tales, re-awakens him to courage, confidence and life. It's Sleeping Beauty reversed, and I must say, it works better for me than in the Matrix.
Neverland reflecting Peter's mood isn't exactly in Barrie, either, that I recall, but it fits with the mythical archetype of Pan as the carefree spirit of nature. With the visit to Bayreuth not too long ago behind me, I'm also reminded of those Wagnerian heroes, Siegfried and Parsifal, who don't know what fear is until they meet Brünhild and Kundry respectively. The difference between the first Peter/Hook duel, in which in a dangerous situation he smiles at Hook and says "to die would be an awfully big adventure", and the climactic one, in which Hook literally makes him fall from the skies by describing in detail the future in which he'll have lost Wendy and she will be grown up and married, has the same quality. Peter is completely invulnerable and undefeatable in Barrie; in the film, he is until he realizes he loves Wendy and will lose her because he can't bring himself to grow up with her. The confidence regained by her kiss isn't the careless pride of the beginning anymore but a knowing one, which is why he can defeat Hook in the same way Hook defeated him, by giving voice to Hook's fears.
Lastly: "I do believe in fairies, I do, I do." This is the most obvious stage-to-screen moment. (Also familiar if you've watched E.T. - this is the excerpt of Peter Pan which Mary reads to little Gertie while E.T. listens in the closet, in a nice bit of foreshadowing of E.T.'s on resurrection later.) Basically, you can't repeat in a film what the stage play does, asking the audience to revive Tinkerbell by clapping their hands, and the solution they came up with for the movies feels a bit awkward, but ultimately works for me.
Anyway, because of this, I couldn't concentrate on what I was supposed to be working on, till I gave in and watched another movie I had missed in the theatres, the most recent Peter Pan directed by P.J. Hogan. Which turned out to be a good choice. I was utterly charmed. They managed to keep what the Disney version misses out completely, the many disturbing undercurrents in J.M. Barrie going along with the Edwardian playfullness. (This also reminds me of a production of his play Dear Brutus I saw in Nottingham. Going into the woods is as risky in Barrie as it is in Sondheim.) Take the scene with the mermaids, who are beautiful but genuinely spooky and radiating malvolence.
Moreover, the problematic side of the state of eternal childhood is tackled. In the novel version by Barrie, Peter and Wendy, it's just in one scene, the epilogue, in which Peter meets an adult Wendy, and his horror at realizing she grew up, and her sadness is palpable before the dea-ex-machina in form of her daughter provides a happy ending. This scene (which one can find among the deleted scenes on the DVD) inspired a major theme in the film, as well as the one major psychological victory Hook scores - Wendy is on the brink of puberty and will grow up, and Peter will not. Choosing to remain a child forever, he also makes it impossible for himself to experience adult emotions. "You're a tragedy," Hook says, and it's as true as Peter's later retaliation.
But I'm making the film sound gloomy, which it isn't. From the moment where Wendy tells her brothers stories by acting them out, you could tell the child actors had fun, and it's shared by the audience. Jason Isaacs, playing Mr. Darling and Captain Hook both as is an English stage tradition, never goes over the top in either role. Now the man managed to make a character like Lucius Malfoy, who was always rather dull to me on the written page, into a compelling villain in the movie version of CoS, so it didn't surprise me that his Hook oozed charisma.
Speaking of Potterdom, I remember several lj discussions on the occasion of the most recent movie, PoA, about the problem of sexualisation of the child/teenage actors in fanfic and iconage. Also of the delicate but pointed way Cuaron did play on the fact the characters, at age 13 (with the actors being only a year or two older), are hitting puberty now. Since the 2003 Peter Pan is in part a coming of age story for Wendy, the great balance P.J. Hogan keeps has to be admired as well. There is no fetish-ation of child bodies, but Wendy, we're told, is twelve and soon to be 13, and looks like it. The kiss she's waiting for and finally is giving Peter is not the sexless kiss of a child anymore. In the one big (but beautifully working) departure from Barrie, it is not the goodbye kiss at the end of the adventure but a kiss that, as is traditional in fairy tales, re-awakens him to courage, confidence and life. It's Sleeping Beauty reversed, and I must say, it works better for me than in the Matrix.
Neverland reflecting Peter's mood isn't exactly in Barrie, either, that I recall, but it fits with the mythical archetype of Pan as the carefree spirit of nature. With the visit to Bayreuth not too long ago behind me, I'm also reminded of those Wagnerian heroes, Siegfried and Parsifal, who don't know what fear is until they meet Brünhild and Kundry respectively. The difference between the first Peter/Hook duel, in which in a dangerous situation he smiles at Hook and says "to die would be an awfully big adventure", and the climactic one, in which Hook literally makes him fall from the skies by describing in detail the future in which he'll have lost Wendy and she will be grown up and married, has the same quality. Peter is completely invulnerable and undefeatable in Barrie; in the film, he is until he realizes he loves Wendy and will lose her because he can't bring himself to grow up with her. The confidence regained by her kiss isn't the careless pride of the beginning anymore but a knowing one, which is why he can defeat Hook in the same way Hook defeated him, by giving voice to Hook's fears.
Lastly: "I do believe in fairies, I do, I do." This is the most obvious stage-to-screen moment. (Also familiar if you've watched E.T. - this is the excerpt of Peter Pan which Mary reads to little Gertie while E.T. listens in the closet, in a nice bit of foreshadowing of E.T.'s on resurrection later.) Basically, you can't repeat in a film what the stage play does, asking the audience to revive Tinkerbell by clapping their hands, and the solution they came up with for the movies feels a bit awkward, but ultimately works for me.
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no subject
Date: 2004-08-13 11:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-13 11:47 am (UTC)Sorry to hear about the bad news. I'll be hoping it's just temporarily bad with a happy ending.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-13 11:57 am (UTC)Thanks!
Agree wholeheartedly...
Date: 2004-08-13 01:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-13 06:41 pm (UTC)I've been looking forward to seeing Pan, so this good review adds to my hope of its quality.
Re: Agree wholeheartedly...
Date: 2004-08-13 09:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-13 09:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-13 09:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-14 02:25 am (UTC)I am sorry, I probably came off like a total jerk, but Wagner does this to me. Like I said, pay no attention to me.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-14 02:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-14 03:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-14 05:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-14 05:52 am (UTC)Und eine längere Hausarbeit habe ich über Eschenbachs "Parzifal" geschrieben, und jetzt wundert dich wahrscheinlich eh nix mehr- cheers!
no subject
Date: 2004-08-14 06:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-15 08:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-15 09:59 pm (UTC)