Posterized: Peter Pans

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the death of Sylvia Llewelyn Davies. You remember it well, I'm sure. She was dragged from her bed to watch an intimately staged performance of the new play Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up. As the play ended and the music soared, she walked right onto the Neverland set filled with fairies and crocodiles and pirates which had miraculously sprung up in her own living room. And she kept on walking right into her own spotlit afterlife. Well that was how it happened to Kate Winslet as Sylvia in Finding Neverland at least. They took some liberties with the timeline for the movie.


Davies was survived by her five sons, who had of course served as inspiration for Peter Pan. The author JM Barrie, a close family friend, all but adopted the boys after her death, as they'd lost their father three years prior to her passing.

So for today's Posterized, in tribute to the Davies boys and their mum, let's glance at the various film incarnations of the story of that boy who never grew up.

Peter Pan (1924) | Peter Pan (1953)

Hook (1991) | Peter Pan (2003) | Return to Neverland (2004)

Those are the only five "authorized" screen versions of which P.J. Hogan's 2003 version is the winner (not that the silent feature and the Disney movie don't have their moments. The less said about Hook the better.) The 2003 version is so undervalued, appropriately fantastical and is also (relatively) true to the 1911 novel Peter and Wendy which was expanded from the stage play and is how most human beings knew the myth until Disney got a hold of it of course.

The Lost Boys (1978) | Finding Neverland (2004) | Neverland (2003)

There are numerous unauthorized versions and reinterpretrations (the most recent of which, Neverland, I included above), lots of animated version from other countries as well as two films specifically about JM Barrie and his relationship to the Davies family which star Ian Holm and Johnny Depp respectively. I wasn't a fan of Finding Neverland (2004) but someone sure was; it won 7 Oscar nominations including Best Picture.

I haven't seen that Ian Holm production but I'd love to hear from anyone who did. I had no idea that existed and I find it very odd that that means that Sir Ian Holm has played not one but two famous authors who had much discussed relationships with other people's children. He also played Alice in Wonderland scribe Lewis Carroll in Dreamchild (1985) which is about Alice as an older woman remembering her youth and her friendship with the author. I guess Ian Holm has been cast as an eccentric writer more often than that even. He's also Bilbo Baggins and played strange scribes in Joe Gould's Secret and Naked Lunch. Funny how actors get in those weird casting grooves.

How many versions of Peter Pan have you seen?
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Take Three: Radha Mitchell

Craig here with another Take Three.

Today: Radha Mitchell

Two Melindas in one for Woody Allen, a video game avatar made flesh in Silent Hill and a sensual magazine intern in High Art aside (plus central roles in The Waiting City, The Children of Huang Shi and Visitors), Radha Mitchell has peppered her career with solid, dependable and intriguing supporting roles. The leads may be few and far between, but Mitchell has delivered quality input on film and television for the last two decades. She's a genre girl at heart - an amiable trait about this Australian character actress.

Take One: Don't croc the boat, baby

Croc horror flick Rogue (2007) came out without much fanfare last year (limited US theatrical release, DVD premiere in the UK) - a shame as it was one of the more enjoyable monster movies of recent times. Essentially Lake Placid with a shade more atmosphere (but, alas, without Betty White's foulmouthed, mariticidal croc-lover), it did a forthright job of emulating Jaws, equalling Alligator and trumping, slightly, 2007's other Oz Crocodile-attack flick Black Water.

It required a dependable thespian presence, so it's no surprise director Greg Mclean went with an actress of Radha Mitchell's talents. She adds to the film a work(wo)manlike professionalism. As Kate Ryan, a boat-cruise tour guide on the waters of Kakadu National Park in the Australian outback, Mitchell steered a cast of human bait (including lead hunk Michael Vartan) away from the snapping gnashers of a stray, oversize scaly menace whilst matching the film's narrative efficacy with a cracking, fuss-free turn.

Mitchell is our tour guide through the bothersome reptile shenanigans, too. Vartan's travel writer is the audience identification vessel, but Kate's the one in the know. We trust her like we trusted Chief Brody. Mitchell plays her straight down the line, but both realistically fallible and clear minded.

Screaming, not drowning: Radha Mitchell in Rogue

Knockoff genre flicks like this are often just CV fillers in decent role droughts for many a performer, but Mitchell commands with aplomb and gives Kate a weary gravitas not always required in these types of film. Genres flicks are never beneath her - and I applaud her for this. Like other supporting actress peers such as Rosamund Pike and Rose Byrne Mitchell shows here and elsewhere (Surrogates, Silent Hill, Pitch Black etc) that she's unafraid to balance mainstream character parts with "lowbrow" sci-fi/horror genre treats...

Take Two: Not so crazy in love?

...a trend that continued earlier this year with her role in The Crazies (2010) remake - for which I adore her all the more for making. She plays Judy Dutton, the pregnant doctor wife of town sheriff Timothy Olyphant; he's ostensibly the lead, and Mitchell supports, but almost equal weight is given to both characters. She doesn't merely tag along as all crazy hell breaks loose when the townsfolk start foaming at the mouth. She's the medical head to Olyphant's authority brawn.

Their marriage appears wholesome, a stable marital centre, but deep down - especially in the way Mitchell plays her scenes, particularly when the two are alone - there's a troubling black spot fathomable within Judy. There are hints of more going on within their marriage, a past bad deed on his part perhaps that, through the way she infers a steadfast reluctance to not just be passive wifey, says more about their personal situation than what was first apparent. Judy's ever-so-slightly frosty air subtly underlines the exterior threat. The potential for the smalltown rot was already there even before the virus leaked.

She's behind you!: Mitchell needs to hire a new nanny in The Crazies

Despite all the running and panicking that's part-and-parcel with near-apocalyptic mass hysteria, Mitchell plays the role with a sly poker face. She gamely fleshes out the role, adds a deft level of nuance unlikely in the script as written. Mitchell rarely appears as merely a victim in her roles, and in The Crazies she's trooping until the end. There's a nagging question hanging over the couple by the film's close - but it goes deeper than the threat of the virus. In her own way Mitchell provides just a touch more complexity to the film.

The casting of thirty- (Mitchell) and forty-something (Olyphant) actors in the leads is a breath of fresh air from the standard teens-in-peril of most recent horror remakes. It's a bold and interesting move. Mitchell was perfect casting: she's well versed in horror genre tropes, supplies an air of everyday plausibility, and, as ever, gives it the requisite amount of gusto.

Take Three: Wonder-less woman

A room of one's own: Mitchell in Finding Neverland

Finding Neverland (2004) was a film I was less than keen on, but the one good thing I came away from the film remembering with fondness was Mitchell's performance as Mary Ansell Barrie, J.M.'s wife. The filmmakers needed a character to question and balance out all the magical, childlike whimsy going on, and Mary was the scapegoat to fit the bill.

Director Marc Forster wants the audience to share in Depp and Winslet's fanciful games, so Mary is duly posited as the antagonistic party-pooper. We're invited to view her as the - boo-hiss-boo - villain of the piece: she's frigid, unmotherly and uninterested in Barrie's sense of wonder. The couple even sleep in separate rooms: his filled with colour and adventure; her's a dark, barren void. The blame is laid at her door.

Men are from Neverland, women are from Room 101

No fair, I say. I felt for her; I wasn't taken in by all the saccharine quirkiness either. The other characters sidelined her, saw her as gloomy and selfish, and it seemed the filmmakers did too: Mary is all-too-often filmed isolated and pushed to the edges of the film frame, alone and unhappy. A dramatic construct sure, but Mary unjustly took the brunt of film's magical biases.

Ticket for one for Peter Pan please?

Mitchell's work is cut out for her and she grafts overtime to make Mary a compelling presence. Her performance was understated and conveyed with praiseworthy dignity. The piecemeal compassion doled out to Mary by the end is hard-earned, but meagre. Mitchell beautifully expresses Mary's last-minute vindication with acute skill.

Of course most of the awards acclaim centred on Depp, Winslet and Highmore but - in an echo of the film's plot - Mitchell was unfairly left out in the prize-giving (only receiving a token joint nomination from SAG). Boo-hiss-boo indeed. For me, the film's few successes lay in Mitchell's hands. Call me a whimsy denier, but I was with Mary all the way.