A beautiful, touching and cleverly structured film: Warning, contains spoilers!

Rating: 10/10 (19 November 2004)

I went to see this film about a week ago and was really, really happy when I came out of the cinema. Johnny Depp was absolutely stunning (and not just in looks, either!) - he was exactly right in all his emotional responses. He was soft, gentle and touching at the appropriate moments, but also really realistic in the way he played and interacted with the children, and in the way he talked to Sylvia and Mrs du Maurier. Kate Winslet was also very good, and a very convincing widow and mother, but sadly didn't strike me emotionally the way that Depp did. The other thing that struck me as realistic was the relationship between Barrie and his wife, which was wonderfully cold and sharp.
As for the film itself, I thought it was absolutely beautifully structured and very, very cleverly put together. The way in which they subtly, but still clearly, showed where Barrie got his ideas from for Peter Pan (Mrs du Maurier poking the children with the coathanger ("hook"), the Indians, the pirates...) was ingenious! *SPOILER* The way Sylvia's death was done was also wonderful - it was shown in a very beautiful fashion, very clearly but with not too much sentimentality. Stunning. There were also tiny pieces of cinematography that if you blink, you'll miss, but that actually made the film for me. My favourite was just after a cold confrontation between Barrie and his wife, where it shows them both going into separate rooms, and the door opens to Barrie's to reveal a beautiful garden, blue sky and a tree. It just sums up everything so concisely that they'd been saying in dialogue not quite as eloquently - that Barrie is in a different world from, well, the rest of the world.
Overall, an absolutely wonderful, beautifully constructed and touching film!