Tragically Enchanting!

Rating: 9/10 (28 September 2004)

Director Marc Forster produces a gem of a screenplay with cinematic dual stage effects that are delightful to see and even more fun to try to figure out. His treatment of a subject that could be taken into many dark corners is at once tragic and enchanting.
Johnnie Depp gives a great performance as the playwright J. M. Barrie. He gives Mr. Barrie a realistic character that none could exceed. Kate Winslet is completely at ease in her role as Mrs Sylvia Llewelyn Davies, the widowed mother of 4 small boys and daughter of Mrs. du Maurier, a domineering mother (played to perfection by Julie Christie). Mr Barrie meets the boys and their mother in a park during one of his frequent visits to walk his dog and write in his journal. His interaction with the boys especially one named Peter is the backdrop to discovering Mr. Barrie's personality.
The joy that Mr. Barrie finds in the interaction with the four Llewelyn Davies boys and some innuendo with Mrs. Llewelyn Davies is tempered by the troubled marriage to his wife Mary, played ably and with a pathos I hadn't expected by Radha Mitchell.
Mr. Barrie enjoys a career in playwriting for producer Charles Frohman (Dustin Hoffman) that has fallen to a low point at the beginning of the movie. Mr. Frohman as foil to Mr. Barrie's ideas and the development of a new play provide a good sidebar to the main storyline. The pre-war era of England in 1903 provides a surreal version of fantasy and real life interacting inside Mr. Barrie and the Llewelyn Davies boys
The most surprising acting in the movie is not by one of the main characters. It is the acting of Freddie Hoffman as Peter Llewelyn Davies that shines.
I highly recommend this movie to all but the most jaded movie goer.