Barrie's Happy Thought

Rating: 7/10 (13 January 2007)

Happy Thoughts A Short Review on "Finding Neverland" At "Finding Neverland" we view a film that tries to portray the life of J M Barrie (Johnny Depp), the writer of "Peter Pan", 1904.
Neverland is where the time stops and boys remain boys. Neverland is where we all want to live in when we find out how difficult is to be a grown up, a person with responsibilities, and too much in our heads to enjoy simple things.
But "Peter Pan" the character who is said to be inspired by "Peter", one of the Sylvia Llwelyn Davies (Kate Winslet) son's, is in fact J M Barrie himself. "I am not Peter Pan. He is," Peter says looking at uncle Jim.
This story clearly portrays the internal dreams of a grown up man, who regrets his lost boyhood days and those fantastic times that he had no shadows and he could fly.
But who are fairies? Why did J M Barrie bring fairies into this? Because fairies are children's innocence and happiness. They are symbols of JM Barrie's belief that those little pure smiles will die when we grow up, when we stop believing in laughing and flying. But there is one way to get back to Neverland .To find our happy thoughts. Grown-ups have shadows and no happy thoughts.
As it goes for the J M Barrie's life, we can picture a man in great anguish, struggling with his sorrow of an unhappy marriage and troubles of unsuccessful career. Here Johnny Depp gives a dark shadow to J M Barrie's character. His coldness to women around him, and his obsession with his career, takes him to extremes of abandoning his home and spending his time playing with Sylvia Davies' boys, concentrating on the one he thinks is growing up faster than others, Peter.
Barrie tries to teach the pleasures of writing to Peter, as a tool to escape from the anguish of losing his father and the fear of losing his mother.
Perhaps writing was Barrie's Happy Thought.