A Huge Lie of a Movie

Rating: 2/10 (16 May 2005)

This movie is very touching and would have been a masterpiece had it not been so misleading.
Many historians have called Barrie a pedophile, and for good reason. Barrie was impotent and unable to love women (that is what apparently drove his wife in Gilbert's arms) so he turned his affection to children instead. He would take nude pictures of the 5 Davies boys (does child pornography come to mind?), would write George Davies 2000 letters a day (which were later burned by the family), even in one confessing that he was ' more and more wishing you were a girl of 21 instead of boy, so that I could say the things to you that are now always in my heart '. In his writings (such as 'Little White Bird', read for yourself) he reveals a disturbing and darker side of himself - a sexual desire for children and even his frustration with it.
Even though none of the Davies boys ever said anything about such an incident happening, one is left wondering as to why two of the boys committed suicide. Michael drowned himself with a male friend in some sort of strange pact, and Peter, despite becoming a successful publisher later on in life, threw himself under a train a month before the centenary of Barrie's birth.
The whole of "Finding Neverland' makes Barrie out to be some sort of loving and very wise father figure when in fact he was a deeply disturbed, lonely, and insecure social outcast who was sexually aroused by children. This is only typical of Hollywood, who the same year produced a movie celebrating another pedophile, Alfred Kinsey.We cannot forget last year's 'Monster', which is done so brilliantly it even makes us feel sorry for serial killer Aileen Wuornos. When one watches this movie after having read about the true twisted character of Barrie, everything about 'Finding Neverland' just seems artificial in essence.
I found it intensely depressing, knowing that with it being such an immaculately made, touching story, not to mention the Oscar nods and rave reviews it received, people who don't care enough to dig any deeper will forever see Barrie as the wonderful, practically perfect human being he is made out to be in 'Finding Neverland'. This movie is a tragedy, just like the lives of the Davies' family and James Barry himself.