Pan Review
by: Anna Verhaegen
edited by: Anthony Zangrillo
Pan is the story of the Boy Who Never Grew Up, retold for a generation raised on the story of the Boy Who Lived. However, Pan, based on the famous character created by Scottish playwright J.M. Barrie, struggles to capture the same magic as the Harry Potter films. The movie opens in a Dickensian England where a tearful mother (Amanda Seyfried) leaves her baby, along with a letter and a panflute pendant necklace, on the steps of an orphanage straight out of Oliver Twist. Twelve years later, audiences jarringly arrive at the height of WWII (somehow), following the same orphanage dwelling child (Levi Miller), now firmly in the clutches of an evil nun stereotype, Sister Barnabas (Kathy Burke). Peter discovers that not only is the villainous Sister hiding food rations and his mother’s letter, but worse yet, she is selling children to the enterprising pirate Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman) as cheap labor for his mining scheme. Our stalwart orphan Peter remains determined to find his lost mother “in this world or another.” What happens instead, is that he too gets the shaft (literally), as he is sent to the mines, rather than his mother. The pirates whisked Peter away to Neverland following a lengthy fighter-plane versus flying steam punk pirateship chase scene (one of many). Once in Blackbeard’s mines, Peter encounters an unlikely friend James Hook (Garrett Hedlund). Hook is an adventurous southern drawling charmer who (unlike the original) still has use of both of his hands. Peter soon discovers that not only can he fly, but he is also the boy foretold to save both the island natives and the fairy kingdom. No pressure, Peter!
Once Peter is revealed to be the ‘chosen child’ of the mysterious prophecy, every plot point hinges on this well worn trope. Not even Neo from The Matrix faced this much ham-fisted religious symbolism. Furthermore, moments of plot explanation are often all too conveniently revealed by an enchanted tree or flashbacks from swimming in magical waters. What should be mere foreshadowing falls just slightly short of outright exposition. Even the New York Subway system builds better suspense. Blackbeard’s strip mining quest for life-sustaining fairy stones becomes this weird pseudo environmentalist subplot that was lengthy and fraught with anachronistic moments. Somewhere the creatures from Pocahontas or perhaps even Avatar are crying “copyright!” Likewise, one such moment of confusion involved a swarm of children mine workers chanting to “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Do they mean to tell me that Nirvana had been playing together since WWII? Does Blackbeard have a CD Walkman stolen from the 90s grunge era? Many questions arise as what should be fantasy falls sloppily into everyday confusion.
Questions over racial casting has mired the film as the casting director stumbled straight into the ethnic quagmire that is the “original” story. Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily, a native warrior princess whose red eye makeup can only be described as “Cat Allergy Chic,” drew an outcry from many who wanted a Native American actress to fill the role. The film tries its best to sidestep this controversy by making the tribal Neverland Natives culturally ambiguous. Including people of every race, and designing tribal costumes far from Native American tradition, the film makes its best effort at escaping cultural insensitivity.
In addition to the above gripes, the director also made a mess of the film’s pacing. The plot felt rushed, perhaps exhilarating to a child viewer, but exhausting for those over the age of twelve. As someone who has seen all the Peter Pan films and/or spinoffs (Disney’s Peter Pan,Hook,the 2003 Peter Pan, etc.), I saw straight into the heart of the frenzy. Trying to incorporate all the beloved characters from the original Peter Pan, while introducing a whole new backstory is impossible. The mad dash to include token references resulted in a loss of the quality of the original characters. I was not impressed by the brief Merman-Zoolander-esque mermaid scene, for example (featuring a trio of Cara Delevingne faces for a whole minute). Or when the film introduced Tinkerbell and then dropped her from importance faster than you can say, “He can fly!”
Still, there were moments when the movie soared. Neverland itself, in all its fantastical CGI glory, is imaginatively designed and meshes well with the swashbuckling soundtrack by John Powell. Director Joe Wright grew up with his parents running a children’s puppet theater, which influences his cinematography today in beautiful ways. Many fight scenes (and there were many surprisingly, for a kid’s movie) make clever use of shadow and visual language. The effect adds a feeling of live stage drama. Unfortunately, one of the most important elements of puppet theatre is the necessity of suspending your disbelief. Wright dwells in a conflicted back and forth between fantasy and reality, while struggling to capture the childlike wonder of the original. Peter Pan may be ‘The Boy Who Never Grew Up’, but many of its viewers have and might find themselves seeking the second theatre door to the right and straight on till morning.
Score:
5.5/10
Very excellent review. Consider me now informed.