Plot
Novelist and playwright James Barrie (Ian Holm) meets the two oldest Davies boys, George and Jack, during outings with their nurse Mary Hodgson (Anna Cropper) in Kensington Gardens. He entertains them, especially George, with his fantasy stories, some of which include a magical young boy who shares a name with their infant brother Peter.
Barrie and his wife Mary (Maureen O'Brien) meet the boys' parents Sylvia (Ann Bell) and Arthur (Tim Pigott-Smith) at a dinner party, and he forms a friendship with the mother and her sons. The Barries and Davies socialize, but Mary and Arthur each quietly resent Barrie: Mary for neglecting her, and Arthur for imposing upon his family. Sylvia and Arthur have two more sons, Michael and Nico, whom Barrie adds to his circle of young friends. He writes a play inspired by them: Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, which is a great success for him and his producer friend Charles Frohman (William Hootkins).
Arthur is struck by a disfiguring and ultimately fatal cancer. Barrie steps in to support the Davies family, attempting to be a friend to Arthur in his final days but alienating Jack with his interference. With George away at school, sensitive Michael becomes the centre of 'Uncle Jim's' attention. Tired of her husband's indifference toward her, Mary falls in love and has an affair with Barrie's young colleague Gilbert Cannan (Brian Stirner). When Barrie finds out, Mary refuses to end the affair, and he reluctantly grants her a divorce. Meanwhile, Sylvia has fallen ill with cancer, and dies a few years after her husband. Barrie claims they were engaged.
The boys continue to live in the Davies's London house with Mary Hodgson, and Barrie becomes their guardian, following Sylvia's wishes. As the years go by, George becomes an adult confidant to Barrie, while Jack joins the Navy. When World War I breaks out, George and Peter enlist. George is later killed in combat. Jack returns to London to marry. Barrie gives the newlywed the Davies's house, and Michael and Nico move in with him in his flat which prompts Mary Hodgson to resign. Peter returns from the War with a morbid outlook on death. Michael spends increasing time with his school friends and chafes at Barries's desire to keep him close; he drowns short of his 21st birthday. In later years, Barrie suffers loneliness but takes some measure of enjoyment in the company of the young son of his secretary, Lady Cynthia Asquith (Sheila Ruskin).
Read more about this topic: The Lost Boys (docudrama)
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““The plot thickens,” he said, as I entered.”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
“Trade and the streets ensnare us,
Our bodies are weak and worn;
We plot and corrupt each other,
And we despoil the unborn.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)