Pan

Pan, 2015

Directed by Joe Wright, 111 minutes

Hugh Jackman, Garrett Hedlund, Rooney Mara and Levi Miller

Review by Katherine Scheetz

In this would-be explicative Peter Pan origin story, we start off hopeful with a strong opening scene marked by an aerial shot of a single lit doorway casting a blue beam onto Peter’s abandoned baby basket in the midnight London streets. The lighting team sustains their clever choices throughout with smart lights against the bold make up on Jackman and Mara and lighting blues and pinks against the lush foliage to set an imaginative bioluminescent mood upon the native forest. Meanwhile, behind the lights a score of deep percussive drums and warpipes trills, but like all things in Pan it’s just busy music that sounds like it is rooted in Powell’s How To Train Your Dragon (2010) score. He does dazzle us again, although with less vigor, as his signature sound made its debut in Dragon and tastes more like a cheap knockoff in Pan.

The strongest lines are the ones crafted by J.M Barrie himself. “Death will be the greatest adventure” uttered by the aboriginal chief before exploding in a powder-ful puff of a colored cornstarch death and Hedlund’s fresh new take on “second to the right and straight on til morning!” puts butterflies in my little fan-girl belly. However the rest of the writing falls victim to dialogue so predictably scripted that we could mouth the words along.

It is an unnecessarily stimulated storyline for sure. Think along the lines of Wright’s Anna Karenina (2012). With such rich content to call upon from the myth of Peter Pan, as the audience we ask ourselves why repulsive nuns hiding war time rations, the American west mining town and explosive Holi powder deaths are needed to make the film more imaginative. Any of those settings independent from one another have promising vibrancy, but together, it overwhelms.

What the preponderance of plot does is take over. Instead of the characters being allowed to drive the story with their decisions and unfolding slowly, the complexities of their dimensions, the film is propelled forward by an unyielding plot. We audience members remain distanced, in a fishbowl that cuts off the accessibility of our childhood and the Peter Pan we know.

Through the density of plot the characters only ever become simple caricatures of adulthood: a grubby, amoral nun, an old man consumed by obsession, a guarded warrior woman, an adventure-seeking prospector, a boy who has to learn to believe in himself. Wright’s attempt to bring more dimension to the characters of this beloved story does exactly the opposite: portray overdone, singularly-willed individuals who are not strong enough to make their own decisions. The plot decides for them. In all of this however, the most compelling moments of acting come from newcomer Levi Miller, who reminds us that Peter Pan is not just Huck Finn on an other-worldly, never ending, swashbuckling thrill ride, but a boy with sadness, longing, empty spaces and desires.

By far, the best directorial decision that Wright made is his collaboration with Andrew Huang for several animated sequences, of which one stands out as strongest. “Memory Tree” is a scene of unique flashback storytelling. The animation of tree rings is the outlying a stroke of genius in the film. It follows threads of inspiration from the “Tale of Three Brothers” (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (2010) animation, but with an appropriately naturalistic twang. It’s beautiful to watch, plain and simple. Huang is one to keep an eye on.

Pan had potential to join the list of origin stories that only enhance the myths they derive from, among recent ones like Robin Hood (2010), Star Trek (2009) and Casino Royale (2006). But Pan misses the mark by so much that it’s a wonder Peter managed to fly at all.

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