SUNDANCE ’20 REVIEW

SUNDANCE 2020: Benh Zeitlin’s Gritty Pan Redux ’WENDY’ A Gorgeous Hot Mess

Name: Sundance 2020 review
Item: Sundance 2020
Rating: 2.7
Author: Matt Oakes

By Matt Oakes · January 27, 2020

SUNDANCE 2020: Benh Zeitlin’s Gritty Pan Redux ’WENDY’ A Gorgeous Hot Mess

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Benh Zeitlin joined a very exclusive club of first-time filmmakers in their 20’s to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Director when his debut Beasts of the Southern Wild broke out. In the years since earning the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and an Oscar nod to boot, Zeitlin withdrew from the spotlight, whittling away to rebrand the Peter Pan story with his signature Zeitlinisms. Retelling the James Matthew Barrie fantasy with all the semi-grounded, semi-gritty magical realism that propelled Beasts, Zeitlin paints himself into a bit of a corner, refusing to grow up as a director.

Visually, Wendy benefits from being filmed on an actual active Caribbean volcano but like its bubbling-over shoot location spews mostly hot air. The movie reinvents the Peter Pan story as we know it from the ground up: Wendy Darling (Devin France) and her two brother work at a rundown diner in a rundown Southern small town, a place where child labor laws evidently do not exist. One night, they spot a boy (it’s Peter Pan, played by the rather cute Yashua Mack) atop a night train and decide to leap aboard themselves.

The train, much like the film, is heading to directions unknown. Zeitlin clearly draws inspiration from far-flung locales, weaving his story around the might and majesty of Mother Nature. Stylistically, there’s no denying the natural beauty captured, the way cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen (Rams) uses beams of light to highlight the scene and jaw-dropping wide landscape shots that command a special kind of attention and admiration. The ebb and pull of the sea stands in for the ebb and flow of time, an idea that Wendy explores in a pretty undercooked way. Surface-level appeals aside, there’s little lingering beneath the water that hints at the larger purpose; an undertow of childlike wonder without the presence of actual maturIty.

Stay young at heart. Love your mother. Take risks. Value kindness. Wendy deals in many platitudes but has little to say beyond fortune cookie cliches.It doesn’t help that the cast of child actors are of varying levels, more cute than competent in most cases. Despite being seven years in the making, Wendy just can not connect all the dots and flounders trying to tie together the childish sense of possibility and a loose basis in realism. On top of that, the plot is often a hot mess and gets lost in the weeds before the first act has even run its course, sometimes having no momentum at all and other times rushing through major character turns. An attempt at a Captain Hook origin story is probably the best example of this: rushed and underdeveloped, it’s one of many things that just doesn’t work at all.

I’ve heard more than one person remark that Wendy left them bawling. An emotional mess. My experience couldn’t have been more opposite. Zeitlin’s messy passion project left me cold and detached. Disconnected from the characters and not invested in their plot. Wendy isn’t gazing at its navel per se but it does very much seem like the kind of Peter Pan movie that Terence Malick would make, whisper voiceover and all. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is not the recipe to make something like this fly.

CONCLUSION: Benh Zeitlin’s gritty Peter Pan retooling ‘Wendy’ might be gorgeous to look at but there’s little substance and even less momentum. Those expecting little story-wise may find themselves quietly thrilled, the rest will just have to make believe that the movie is any good.