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 there's not a blade of grass out of place.
Natalie Babbitt's 1975 children's novel tells the story of a little girl who who meets up in the woods near her home with a family who 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, there isn't a lot of plot to it; Babbitt relies more on mood, atmosphere, and homespun philosophy.
The book's appeal isn't easy to put into movie terms; there was a low-budget film in 1980 (shot on a shoestring in upstate New York by a band of talented amateurs) that tried hard but missed the heart of the book; it 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.
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 TV's The Gilmore Girls) is the 15-year-old daughter of a prominent landowner in the small town of Treegap. Chafing 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 at best a mixed blessing - and at worst a curse. Meanwhile, as puppy love blooms between Winnie and Jesse, her parents fear that she's been kidnapped. And always in the background there's a stranger in a yellow suit (Ben Kingsley), smiling, friendly, and sinister.
Director Jay Russell is fortunate in the actors he has to work with here, but 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 he's ever played. 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."
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 - 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 would probably look pretty creepy. Making them sweethearts rather than playmates gives a wistful bittersweetness to the film that has no exact equivalent in the book (or in the earlier film), but that nevertheless feels right and faithful. And the film has a more dramatic climax than the book. 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 a breathtaking visual tour de force.
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 Natalie Babbitt's book, Jay Russell's film of Tuck Everlasting is amazed by the enthralling miracle of being alive. And also like the book, it's a genuine work of art; it makes us see the world with different eyes.