march2–15, 2020 | newyork 81somefairy talesaretreasure
trovesforfolklorists,whoplumb
theirdepthsforthemesandarchetypes
oftensharedbydisparatecultures.Other
fairytalesarebest left unplumbed.Take
J. M.Barrie’s playPeterPan,whichthe
writer-directorBenhZeitlinhasreimag-
inedandretitledWendy.As inZeitlin’s
at tention-grabbingdebut,Beastsofthe
SouthernWild,thestoryis toldina free-
wheeling,imagisticstyleplainlyinflu-
encedbyTerrenceMalickandsimilarly
steepedinanxietyovercivilization’sthreat
to the environment. Zeitlin—who was
raised by folklore scholars and hasmore or
less remained in the family busi-
ness—depicts the boy whorefuses
to grow up as a dreadlockedimp
who is intimately connectedtoan
undersea creature calledMother,
wholookslikea giant,shimmer-
ingcatfish.Motherappearsto
representNature(andyouth,andlife,and
hope,etc.) andcommunicateswithher
Lost BoysandGirlsthroughgeysersand
volcaniceruptionsona remoteisland.Her
aurais reminiscentofBarrie’s TinkerBell,
buttheconsequencesofnotbelievingin
Mother’s mysticalbeneficencearefarmore
dire:Youpromptlygetold,areexiledfrom
paradise,anddeveloppiraticalimpulses.
Onpaper,Zeitlin’sstorytiestogetherbet-
terthanPeterPan’s,inwhichthechar-
actersseemrandom—dogswhoserveas
nannies,NativeAmericanprincesses,fair-ieswhoareapplauded back to life, clock-
swallowingcrocodiles. But random turns
outtobea hellofa lot more fun.
Themovie’s prologue is the only thrilling
part.Zeitlin’stitularheroine and narrator
firstappearsasa toddler in her mother’s
diner;it’ s adjacentto a train station, and
shewatchesa littleboy celebrating his
birthdaythrowa fit,wander out onto the
tracks,climba ladder to the top of a car,
andgochuggingoff to who knows where.
Yearslater,Wendy(Devin France) still
livesupstairsfromthat diner and has iden-
tical twin brothers named Douglas and
James (Gage and Gavin Naquin). Unlike
the adults, she doesn’t just mourn
the disappearance of that boy;
she seems to envy him for hav-
ing escaped. She wants adven-
ture before she turns out like her
mom,oncea badass but now sag-
gingunderthe weight of grown-
upresponsibilities.When Peter Pan (Yas-
huaMack)andhiswayward shadow show
up,thethreechildren scamper after him
ontoa passingtrainand leave the swamps
andthefactoriesbehind.
It’sanexhilarating trip until that island
looms,whereuponPeter greets its belching
volcanowith“Hey, Mother! Happy to see
youtoo!”That’swhen I started to get con-
fused.IntheoriginalPeter Pan, Wendy was
whiskedawaytoserve as a mother to the
LostBoys,whorevelin their eternal youth
butstill—here’s the dramatic tension—crave maternal affection and guidance.
Except there’s a mother here already: a
mother of a mother, Mother Nature. There
seems little for Wendy to do but watch the
kids frolic with Sturla Brandth Grøvlen’s
camera chasing after them (he looks to
be getting in on the fun) and Dan Romer
and Zeitlin’s score surging and swooping
from crescendo to crescendo to manufac-
ture and sustain momentum. The style is
immersive, meant to envelop us and bring
us into the story, but it ends up making the
movie feel abstract and distant. And there’s
a void at the center. Mack’s Peter is either
talking to Mother or on his own rascally
wavelength. He seems much younger than
Wendy, who doesn’t have much of a rela-
tionship with him. (When Barrie rewrote
his play as a novel, he called it Peter and
Wendy. Their bond is what holds the ram-
shackle fairy tale together.)
The pirate equivalents are a loose tribe
of old men and women who loll around the
arid part of the island lamenting the youth
that was taken from them because they
had sad thoughts and doubted themselves.
They hate on Mother something fierce. One
of them (whose identity is a surprise) loses
a hand, acquires a hook, and hatches a plan
to murder Mother, an act he is convinced
will turn him back into a child—a baffling
notion we have to accept or risk losing
interest in the film altogether. By the time
of the climactic duel, Zeitlin has managed
to wind his way back to the specifics of Bar-
rie’s Peter Pan but in a way that feels grimly
intellectualized. Look, it’s Captain Hook—
only without the arrrrs and the cool pirate
costume and the paranoid fixation on a
croc. Anything a kid (or the kid in us) would
get excited about has been purged.
Beasts of the Southern Wild also un-
folded on a semi-abstract plane, but it was
grounded in a vivid, specific sense of place
(the Louisiana bayou) and in the clear,
watchful face of Quvenzhané Wallis as a
moppet who scans the water and air for
signals from her absent mother. Expressive
as France’s Wendy is, we don’t feel the same
sort of connection. Barrie’s heroine is wilt-
ing under a rigid, unfeeling mother in an
England laboring to keep up appearances
in the wake of Queen Victoria’s death, and
for a limited time, she finds Peter’s refusal
to grow up—his unyielding allegiance to
anarchism—enchanting. The random-
ness of Barrie’s ingredients suggests a
child asserting his freedom: I can too bring
together pirates and Indians and crocodiles
that go ticktock! He can and does, and the
world is more magical for it, while Zeitlin’s
island of abrasive kids, depressive senior
citizens, a laser-beam-shooting catfish, and
a hyperactive cinematographer feels more
like art-house purgatory. ■MOVIES / DAVID EDELSTEINPeter PonderousWendy takes a children’s classicinto art-house Neverland.WENDY
DIRECTED BY
BENH ZEITLIN.
SEARCHLIGHT
PICTURES. PG-13.PHOTOGRAPH: TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX FILM CORPORATION