Recently Watched: Hook

[ellyssian]

Hook

Watching this movie is a bit like looking up to a mirror.

When we were kids, Peter Pan was an idol - he's never going to grow up, and he always has all these grand adventures with indians and pirates and flying and swords and on and on.

Peter Panning, lawyer, is afraid of flying. As a parent - the mostly-absentee father of two - he is afraid for his children: the very enemy of adventure. In business, he swoops down on floundering companies, buying them out, breaking them up, and selling them: as Granny Wendy points out, he has become a pirate.

Pirates, in the language of the story, are parents. Grownups. People with the inability to see what is really important in life, and to attempt to dictate their rule upon those that they can. To raise them right, to their way of thinking. To destroy their childhood and bring them to a soulless, productive adulthood.

When you look in a mirror, it's hard to escape the things you don't want to see: a bit too much weight around the middle, work playing a more important role in your life than your children, your best intentions at having a great family damaged by your attempts to meet those intentions.

When I watch the relation of Robin Williams portrayal of a middle-aged Peter with his son Jack, I can't help but think of relations between my first-born Justin and myself. I convince myself that I'm not doing that, or, at least not *that* bad, and in some ways it helps me see my situation clearer than I do on my own. The need to be present for my children, the need to keep the spirit alive and not just plod through life paycheck to paycheck. Or, for some, for larger and larger paychecks.

Of course, it's just a movie. Just a kids movie, and it's not really supposed to be that deep. It's a Disney product, not likely to be shown at art houses where a thoughtful analyzes and dissects its meaning.

And I enjoy it as such - a fun family film. Bright colors in Neverland, contrasted with the more subdued wintry weather in London. The war between the Lost Boys and the pirates. Mermaids, shadows, thimbles for kisses, crocodiles and clocks, Tinkerbelle, and happy thoughts.

All of which still manage to provide a reflective surface for parenthood in general, and being a father in particular.

Comments

[nightwind292.livejournal.com]

can't play,
can't fly
can't even CROW!

[patrixa.livejournal.com]

I won't grow-up --never ever -- well, at least most of the time I won't -- well, alright, at least some of the time I won't. And that's the truth!

Hook

[sikander7.livejournal.com]

By coincidence, I watched this the other day with belgatherial and I felt the same way; as a father there are many responsibilities and hard decisions to be made and boring things like work have to be done. And while there is an adventure in leaving the window open, the kid who falls out of the window, or drowns in the pool does die which may be an adventure to come but we don't know.
As you said, it is not intended to be deep, but it does not portray the father role well.