Never forever

Tuck Everlasting is one of the best movies of the year, an exquisite, pitch-perfect fantasy with a heart of gold. It’s the best live-action Disney movie since I don’t know when. It never puts a foot wrong, and not a blade of grass is out of place.

Natalie Babbitt’s 1975 children’s novel tells the story of a little girl who meets an unusual family in the woods near her home. Members of the family never age and cannot die. The book is elusively simple—a straightforward, unadorned story that mixes turn-of-the-last-century pastoral nostalgia with a sober reflection on mortality and the endless circle of life. Written for 9- to 12-year-olds, the book muses on a subject most children never think about and manages to do it without becoming morbid or frightening. At the same time, the book doesn’t have a lot of plot; Babbitt relies more on mood, atmosphere and homespun philosophy.

The book’s appeal isn’t easy to put into movie terms. A low-budget film in 1980 (shot on a shoestring in upstate New York by a band of talented amateurs) tried hard but missed the heart of the book. The movie was like a community-theater production by people who clearly love the show they’re doing but don’t quite understand why it’s so special. This time, though, the filmmakers get it exactly right.

Screenplay writers Jeffrey Lieber and James V. Hart take liberties with the letter, but they preserve the spirit. The story takes place in 1914 (rather than 1880, as in the book), and Winnie Foster (Alexis Bledel of television’s Gilmore Girls) is the 15-year-old daughter of a prominent landowner in the small town of Treegap. Irritated at her over-protective parents (Victor Garber, Amy Irving), Winnie stages a half-hearted rebellion by venturing into the nearby woods. There, she meets 17-year-old Jesse Tuck (Jonathan Jackson); his older brother, Miles (Scott Bairstow); and their parents, Angus (William Hurt) and Mae (Sissy Spacek). Taken to the Tucks’ cabin, she learns the secret of their immortality and comes to understand that it’s a mixed blessing at best, a curse at the worst. Meanwhile, as puppy love blooms between Winnie and Jesse, her parents fear she’s been kidnapped. And a stranger (Ben Kingsley) in a yellow suit is always in the background smiling, friendly but sinister.

Director Jay Russell is fortunate in the actors with whom he’s working here, and he does right by them. Most of them have seldom been better. William Hurt, Sissy Spacek and Ben Kingsley especially shine. Hurt has one scene with young Bledel in a rowboat that’s one of the best scenes he’s ever done. It’s the thematic scene of the film, straight out of the book, in which Angus tells Winnie that he and his family have slipped off the wheel of life. “We don’t live. We don’t grow. We just … are, like the rocks in the road,” he says.

The romance between Winnie and Jesse is a major departure from the book (made easier by raising Winnie’s age from 10 to 15), and it makes a good hook for the story. Even in the book, Winnie has a girlish crush on Jesse that’s sweet enough on the page, but, in a movie, with a real 10-year-old girl and a flesh-and-blood 17-year-old boy, it probably would look fairly creepy.

Making them sweethearts rather than playmates gives a wistful bitter-sweetness to the film that has no exact equivalent in the book (or in the earlier film) but that feels right and faithful nevertheless. The film has a more dramatic climax than the book, also. The less said about that the better; suffice it to say that the resolution of the story is the same but more suitable to the screen, and there’s a shot near the end that is breathtaking.

But then, the whole film is a tour de force in which everything plays its part, from William Ross’ Copland-esque music and James L. Carter’s verdant, sun-dappled cinematography to the performances of a powerhouse cast. Like Babbitt’s book, Jay Russell’s film of Tuck Everlasting is amazed by the enthralling miracle of being alive. And, also like the book, the film is a genuine work of art that makes us see the world with different eyes.