On a cold September morning, a road in London's Shad Thames has been converted to resemble a bustling Victorian Street. Weaving around the horses, carts, barrels and throng of extras dressed in period costume is David Oyelowo, the star of Selma and A United Kingdom. As the camera closes in, Oyelowo's character – Jack Littleton – is approached by a rakish-looking figure from his past.
It all looks very Dickensian, but this is not the latest attempt to bring Oliver Twist or David Copperfield to the big screen. The film is Come Away, a new fantasy drama that delves deep into fairy tale mythology. The suggestion is that two icons of children's literature – JM Barrie's Peter Pan and Lewis Carroll's heroine from Alice in Wonderland – were, in fact, brother and sister.
It's an idea so elegant and simple, you'd think the premise for Come Away belongs to a long-forgotten fairy story. "When I read it, I thought, 'Surely this is based on a book'," admits Oyelowo. "It was just an original idea; that's exactly why I thought, 'Oh, this is special', because I read a lot of scripts, and it's very hard to come by a truly original, cinematic, and universally appealing idea."
The script comes from newcomer screenwriter Marissa Kate Goodhill, who has been developing the idea for over a decade. Eventually, it found its way to Brenda Chapman, director of Pixar's 2012 animation Brave, who makes her live action debut here. "I had really no desire to direct live action," she admits, during a brief break in her exhausting day. "I'm quite happy in animation, but the script got in front of me. And I started reading it and I couldn't put it down."
Goodhill’s concept posits that once upon a time, Peter (Jordan A Nash) and Alice (Keira Chansa) lived with their brother David (Reece Yates) and their parents, Rose and Jack in the English countryside. Set long before Peter became the boy who wouldn’t grow up and Alice was spirited into Wonderland, their adventures here feed off – and into – the indelible worlds created by Carroll and Barrie.
While Oyelowo calls it "an ambitious independent film", Come Away is a long way from the Hollywood excesses of Tim Burton's garish Alice in Wonderland adaptation, or Joe Wright's misfiring 2015 film, Pan. Instead, there are subtle nods to familiar iconography and characters – white rabbits, pocket watches and pirate ships all feature and The Wire's Clarke Peters can even be glimpsed as a mysterious version of Alice's Mad Hatter.
Oyelowo, who also came on board as a producer, called in a favour, recruiting Angelina Jolie to play Rose. “Angie and I have been friends for a long time together. Oddly enough, we actually met at a birthday party several years ago. And really bonded over the fact that we individually have lots of children. She has six, I have four. It was actually knowing Angie more as a mother that really made me think of her for this role.”
On top of this, after seeing Oyelowo in 2014's drama Nightingale, which netted him a Golden Globe nomination, "she made the mistake…of saying to me, 'I'm so jealous, no one ever offers me independent films.' I, of course, thought that was ridiculous and not true. But apparently it was. I thought, let me call her bluff on this. And she read it within four days and was on. So that was definitely the best favour I called in!"
Oyelowo has also been “incredibly helpful” in other ways, says his director. As a self-described “white middle-aged woman”, Chapman was concerned about directing a story about an interracial family, and so went to the actor for support. “I’d turn to him a lot and say, ‘How was this feeling?’ Or ‘How should we focus this scene so it’s not coming from my white-bread perspective, but from a broader perspective that maybe I just haven’t experienced before?’”
Certainly, Chapman's concern shows how American filmmaking is increasingly sensitive towards representation. Come Away also deals with heavyweight themes like grief – brought on after the Littletons' other child David dies in an accident. "It's rooted in themes that are both for young people and for grown-ups," says Oyelowo. "We didn't want it to just be purely fantasy, or bogged down in total reality; it's a very fine line that we're trying to tread."
Like all fairy stories, while there is magic in the air, evil is never too far away. The scene from the set visit comes after David’s death, with Jack back on the streets of London and heading to the underworld he once flirted with. “He’s someone who’s had a bit of a dark past,” Oyelowo says. “Coming to London is fraught with anxiety for him, but he makes the choice to delve into the belly of the beast.”
For all the dark undertones, Oyelowo wanted to make a film that his children could see. "My family, we have movie night every Friday night and there's only so many times you can see Frozen. I love that it's a film the whole family can watch, and I think grown-ups will take something different away to young people. That's what I love so much about Pixar; I would describe this film as live action Pixar."
That Pixar magic naturally comes thanks to Chapman, who previously became the first woman to direct a major Hollywood animation when she made 1998's The Prince of Egypt for DreamWorks. Come Away, however, has been a gear shift from the lengthy animation process. "Animation is a marathon," she says. "That takes anywhere from four to 10 years. This is more like running uphill in sand."
While the film made its world bow at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, the real test will come when kids get to see it. Children make the harshest of critics after all. “I know pretty quickly within a pitch to my kids, whether it’s something that’s going to appeal to them or not,” says Oyelowo. “And this is one that they’re particularly interested in.” And why not? The world could use a sprinkling of fairy dust right now.
Come Away is playing in cinemas in the UAE
