Wendy
Searchlight PicturesIn Wendy, a modern-day interpretation of the Peter Pan story, the viewer is challenged with the task of once again finding magic in the world. The sophomore feature from Beasts of the Southern Wild director, Benh Zeitlin is a frustrating one, constantly tiptoeing on the edge of greatness but lacking the ultimate courage to take the plunge.
It’s certainly impressive what Zeitlin manages to draw from his troupe of young actors, through whom the majority of the film is experienced. The crucial issue lies not within performance, but within the script. We’re given little to no background into these characters who, as a result, feel severely undercooked. Vague whispers of voiceover attempt to reflect a semblance of protagonist, Wendy’s mentality, but provides little insight. Despite stellar performances from both Devin France and Yashua Mack, the relationship between Wendy and Peter, that is such an integral part of the plot, is sidelined, depriving their scenes together of any major emotional payoff. Peter is conceived as more of a naive, confused presence than the overconfident leader of old. He is, in short, a child living by his own rules and master of his own destiny. As a result, his consistent tendency to make bad decisions helps ground him in a unique interpretation of the mythology.
The Neverland of the film is a modern American interpretation, replacing the spirit of adventure with more of a desperate escape from the mundanity of adult life. Whilst the pirates of Disney’s beloved original prove the foil to our protagonists, it is the consternation of maturity that causes Wendy to throw herself down the rabbit hole. Age is seen as a literal disease, spreading in a gangrenous fashion and viewed as openly hostile by the band of children who inhabit the mysterious island. It has something to say about the state of America’s youth, that a sense of juvenile wonder has been crushed by a necessity to surrender to conformity.
Wendy could be viewed as an evolution of Disney’s animated counterpart. The shiny allure of fantasy chips away to reveal the drab plasterboard beneath. The narrative ideas Zeitlin explores here are an admirable attempt at genuine reinvention of a tired story. It scoffs in the face of the conveyor belt of glossy Disney remakes that find themselves heaved off the production line and on to our cinema screens every year. The film doesn’t manage to pull off its concept with the finesse it’d like, but it’s a far more ambitious and interesting approach than what audiences have received of late. There is a persistent melancholic thread running through Wendy. A world overrun with cynicism has led to the death of the fantastical, of the dream, which is leaned upon heavily as the film draws to a close. What takes its place is a rebirth, something new. Wendy teaches us to embrace the past and the familiar, but to chase the future. It’s just a shame that its blips of greatness don’t unite to form a cohesive whole.
Like Zeitlin’s debut, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Wendy imbues a sense of the feasible fantastic into the backwater townships of the Deep South. It’s this locale that allows for much of the films awe-inspiring visual prowess. There’s something biblical about the landscapes on show, a one-time paradise encircled by barren acres of godless wasteland. The lens of cinematographer, Sturla Brandth Grøvlen is nothing short of an ethereal viewfinder, seamlessly transporting us into a world where children don’t grow up. The most comparable visual relative would likely be Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are. Tonally, it very much feels like a descendant of Malick’s work, brimming with youthful vigour and otherworldly beauty, but lacking the soulful introspection the Illinoisan giant has achieved with his meditative back catalogue.
The major trump card Wendy possesses is its score, composed by Zeitlin and Dan Romer. It is nothing short of euphoric, an aural representation of the joyous naivety and adventure of youth that’s as triumphant as it is transcendent. It’s a shame that films like Wendy aren’t visible on the world stage because the music, if nothing else, would be a shoo-in for Oscar gold. A sentimental relative of Tom Twyker’s dreamlike musings on Cloud Atlas, it’s a genuinely moving piece of work. The ending itself is an encapsulation of what the film could have been. As the music swells, an aura of simultaneous sadness and hope permeates from the screen. It’s an astonishing finale that would’ve been a magnificent farewell if only the remainder of the film could have delivered. It matches the opening of Up as a self-contained emotional gut-punch of epic proportions. Once the credits roll, it becomes apparent that for all its prevalent shortcomings, Wendy is less a film to be enjoyed than an experience to be . . . well, experienced.
