DVD movie commentary/review

We may want to ‘transcend’ something in life, whatever that is, such as freedom from a difficulty, way of life, predicaments. Peter’s hope in the family fairy tale movie Pan (2015) is having freedom from predicaments.

We all would like to be free from problems, but things gets in the way of a solution. Peter could reach his destiny if it weren’t for two things that are in his way:

Peter’s in an orphanage

Peter’s mother Mary was saddened to leave her beautiful son on the doorstep of a boy’s home, but she had to. That was what unmarried mothers did, but there is something mythical to Mary’s story that gives it a different context, the stuff of myth.

For Peter, the orphanage is hardly a family. It is not even a suitable surrogate family.  The head Nun is hash and demanding. The writer of Pan is portraying another time, when homes for boys were places of hard discipline and the filmmakers exaggerate this for effect.

Peter would like to be free from a system that instills the harsh rigors of discipline. He hears nothing about love, family and human connection.

Peter has an enemy

One night, Peter is whirled into a pirate ship going to Neverland, but just ahead is a mining colony controlled by pirate, Blackbeard. Peter is not free, yet.

Peter has been taken to another predicament, the hard labor of slave mining, and into the arms of a savage pirate who has a grand sense of entitlement to get his way.

Blackbeard makes Peter a miner and an example of disobedience. He maintains control, a merciless tyrant who cruelly taunts and challenges Peter.

What does Peter do?

Peter wants to be free, but can’t find freedom. He is stuck in a predicament that he wants to overcome or transcend.

Peter may be destined to be free all the same. He is not free now, but freedom may be coming. Though fraught with difficulties—in such ways the life of an orphan—he just may get set free from dark childhood realities.

Some may say this is Peter Pan syndrome—a denial of reality and an inability to cope with life. Yes, childhood and adulthood for that matter may be like a dark dream that we should accept. But what children, and adults, long for in that dark dream, is to wake up to something better.

That something better does not have to be a reality too far gone, according to Pan.