By Buzz Byrne
Psychiatrist Zach Riley (Aaron Eckhart) leaves his fast-track Cornell job to take a position in a rundown, underfunded New England mental facility that housed his father (Nick Nolte) before the man took his own life. Zach needs to uncover the truth about the man that haunts his occasional sleep and find the reasons for his self-inflicted demise. Part of that journey is decoding a hugely popular fairy tale his father authored, “Neverwas,” the story of a magical land just beyond the mountains, with dark knights, good and evil wizards and a brave king who fights for his realm with the aid of a young boy named Zachary.
Despite solid supporting performances from Brittany Murphy and Nick Nolte, as well as a sincerely moving turn from Ian McKellen, the movie struggles to rise above the innate problems in the script.
Generation Xers like me are having children, and since we were born in the age of self-fascination, part of our current life stage involves re-examining our own childhood and the symbolism held in our learned and self-created mythologies. Our parents, the baby boomers, readjusted traditional concepts that are front and center in this movie: mental illness and fatherhood.
It is admirable that writer/director Joshua Michael Stern tackles these concepts in such an honest way, but the looseness of the plot threads are not pulled tightly together in the misplaced climax of the movie. As Zach unravels the layers of his father’s illness, he comes across patient Gabriel Finch (Ian McKellen), a friend and someone who corresponded frequently with his father. Finch is still a patient in the facility, and he has waited for Zach’s return. Finch is convinced he, himself, is the displaced king of Neverwas and, with Zachary’s help, he will reclaim his throne.
The movie flirts uselessly with the possibility that the magical world is really just beyond the mountains. This is a probably how it was marketed, but, unfortunately, it has little to do with the issues the movie wants to explore. This is symptomatic of the Hollywood romanticism of mental illness that one hoped ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST would have crushed and tossed aside. This is not to say NEVERWAS is all fairies and sprites; indeed, we are shown the image of young Zach discovering his dangling, hanged father more than once. Unfortunately, Eckhart, who coproduced the movie, doesn’t have the acting acumen to display the ravages this clearly takes on the character of Zach. For example, he is asked constantly if he is sleeping all right when he looks bright-faced and freshly scrubbed.
The natural turns of the resolution are not delivered. It is set up nicely to shift the patient/doctor relationship to a surrogate
father/son one between McKellen and Eckhart, where truth and forgiveness — the magic of the good wizard — wins out in a moment of unexpected personal breakthrough. It would have been satisfying to see someone up to McKellen’s chops share that kind of moment with him, but the script doesn’t deliver, and Eckhart isn’t up to that challenge. Instead, we get a police standoff and a truly unmotivated change in character. Too bad for us.
This must have been a wonderful part for McKellen to play after assuming roles of such pop culture importance like Magneto and Gandalf. Here, he can work as the disassembler of these mythical giants, and he does so with tenderness. Nolte is compelling as the troubled father, but Jessica Lange, as the mother of Zach, seems to have forgotten how to act. Brittany Murphy is surprisingly good as the romantic interest, and William Hurt, Alan Cumming and Michael Moriarty round out quite the name-filled cast. Ultimately, however, Eckhart and the script let us down.
With this under his belt and some maturing, I would expect more from writer/director Stern in the future.