Directed By Sebastian Lelio

Starring – Florence Pugh, Tom Burke, Kila Lord Cassidy

The Plot – Set in The Irish Midlands in 1862, the story follows a young girl who stops eating but remains miraculously alive and well. English nurse Lib Wright (Pugh) is brought to a tiny village to observe eleven-year-old Anna O’Donnell (Cassidy). Tourists and pilgrims’ mass to witness the girl who is said to have survived without food for months. Is the village harbouring a saint ‘surviving on manna from heaven’ or are there more ominous motives at work?

Rated R for some sexuality

The Wonder | Official Trailer | Netflix – YouTube

POSITIVES

Lelio directs the hell out of this film, captivating his audience with an equally absorbing atmosphere and thought-provoking narrative that continuously elevates the tension in the conflict, even in a film that is intentionally plodding at times as a result of its on-screen investigation. The former is conjured in the coldly damp hue of cinematography from Ari Wegner, articulating Ireland with a weathered elasticity among its immensity that feeds into the isolation factor of the protagonist, but also ambiance among her usage of natural lighting during nighttime interior shots casting a warm glow among the many faces, but an ominous outlining among the swallowing shadows conveying a sense of mystery. The combination of costume and set designs easily immerse us in the transporting essence of the movie’s time frame, playing all the more fluently towards the outdated idealism of the townsfolk at play, while certifying a sense of showmanship to an otherwise limited budgetary influence. The adorning narrative is at times a bit uneven, but when it works conveys emphasis to the science versus religion debate, with the latter being used as a crutch for ulterior motives. Because of such, Pugh is not only asked to nurse this girl to health, but also serve as the eyes and ears of the audience, who decipher through an internal investigation where we constantly feel something far more sinister at play than the primary suspects are leading on. Pugh herself delivers an assertiveness to the role that drives her interactions with a matter-of-fact honesty that sometimes make her an intimidating force of nature among her oppositions, but one whose nonetheless compassionate in the depiction of the audience with the way her frequent stoicism occasionally gives way to an intimate vulnerability when alone in reflection. The work she maintains with 13-year-old Kila Lord Cassidy plays into the overhanging struggle for power between, made uncertain by Cassidy’s innocence to the portrayal, which effectively transfers the ambiguities of the mystery without her feeling simple in a nagging kind of manner. Last but not least, deserving of his own circumstantial shoutout is Matthew Herbert, who casts an ominously plaguing conscience and sombering dynamic to the musical themes and compositions he continuously exerts on the accommodating sequences. Particularly during the climactic third act, his weight of relevance lends itself to the many dark and depraved directions that the story’s evolution takes us through, reaching an astonishing level of triumph and tragedy that it embodies simultaneously among its audible abstractions.

NEGATIVES

One such plot device introduced from the very start of the film is admirable in ambition while breaking the fourth wall, but not necessarily one that I feel is needed in the dimensions of this particular plot. I can certainly understand that Lelio’s intentions are to convey that the divide between art and life are obscured far less than the audience interprets, but at the same time it convolutes the transportive essence of a movie’s capabilities when showing the cards of its actors and artificial sets long before we’ve had an opportunity to experience and immerse ourselves in them. This device comes around a couple of times throughout, straining the already plodding pacing of the storytelling in ways that will continuously test audiences, despite the mere 103-minute run time, while articulating an artistic desire to illustrate to the audience what they should already be capable of interpreting with a narrative with already so many similarities to the same dividing arguments we’re still plagued with to this day, leaving it an afterthought of sorts. In addition to this, a romantic subplot introduced almost spontaneously during the second act feels every bit underdeveloped as it does sacrificial to the aforementioned isolation factor of the protagonist that maintains with it the ambiguity of the characters and mystery of the plot respectively. Considering so little development between these characters takes shape before they do the deed, their bond lacks believability or necessity in its summoning, serving as an outdated plot device instead a merited subplot worthy of so much compromising to the film’s integrity. On that aspect, another problem with the script persists in the film’s climax, which feels a bit too clean and inconsequential to those invested in some pretty extreme measures of resolution. Not only was I a bit disappointed with where the mystery eventually resolved itself, but also in the imposing nature of the townsfolk, who breed convenience in believing the testimony of a character whom they previously shunned in questioning their own religious beliefs, leading to an ending that was a bit more clean and clear-cut than I was initially led to believe within the conflict of not only the believers and non, but also in the English and Irish people who were already involved in their own geographic civil war.

OVERALL
Sebastian Lelio’s latest, “The Wonder” requires more patience in its narrative than should be involved in a straight, narrow side of storytelling. While blessed by a captivating turn from Pugh at the helm, as well as blanketing technical merits that are second to none, the film is equally compromised with some strangely undercooked decisions of creativity that double down on the film’s sauntered pacing, leading to a haunting, but occasionally frustrating experience that weakens its wonder almost immediately from the opening fourth-wall deconstruction.

My Grade: 6/10 or C+