Directed By Marc Forster

Starring – Helen Mirren, Ariella Glaser, Orlando Schwerdt

The Plot – From the best-selling author of ‘Wonder’. The film follows Julian (Bryce Gheisar), who has struggled to belong ever since he was expelled from his former school for his treatment of Auggie Pullman. To transform his life, Julian’s grandmother (Helen Mirren) finally reveals to Julian her own story of courage, during her youth in Nazi-occupied France, a boy shelters her from mortal danger. They find first love in a stunning, magical world of their own creation, while the boy’s mother (Gillian Anderson) risks everything to keep her safe.

Rated PG-13 for some strong violence, thematic material and adult language

White Bird – Official Trailer (youtube.com)

POSITIVES

A sequel to a crowd-pleasing family drama with complete resolution seemed like an improbability, however ‘White Bird’ justifies its existence with some unique choices to its integrity that leads to quite a compelling secondary effort, proving eclectic creativity for the book series that the film emanated from. For starters, the film’s dependency on drama of the suspenseful variety is duly noted, this time with the character backstory of invading Nazi’s who condemn their Jewish opposition to claustrophobic surroundings that feel like they grow tighter by the day. Forster might be plagued by eventual predictability that takes suspense out of one particular character’s conflict, but he directs it wonderfully to get the pulse of the audience racing, especially during spontaneous inspection sequences, where the sound design and even shot framing can emit audiences with a feeling of impending doom. As to where the first film resonated as a consistent slice of life narrative that refused to ever test the inspiring feelings of its audience, this one has no problem rattling their nerves, and as a result we have a matured and creatively evolved sequel that occasionally tests the confines of a PG-13 rating, all without feeling indulgently exploitative or as a crutch to fuel the movie’s conflict. In addition to the tone of the material, the film is aided tremendously by its transformative production values, capturing France seamlessly with a combination of dated costumes, on-site locations, subtlety in set designs, and cinematographic weathering exuding a vintage tinsel to scenes filmed surprisingly with natural lighting. Such sequences are shot during the night, in a crumbling barn, and with the exuding essence of the moon representing a hope between two characters in search of their own respective freedoms, adds an appreciated touch of class to the production that was a real treat to visually interpret, making the film feel twice as ambitious with its presentation, in ways that ‘Wonder’ never got an opportunity to even sniff. Because of such, the film’s opportunity to get lost in a story set in the past never goes unexplored, enriching the engagement with authenticity that never weathered or broke my continuous concentration, and though the narrative occasionally flashes back and forth, to current day, it was the past where I wished to spend a majority of my time, serving as a testament to the established world that its filmmakers attain in spellbinding spades. It’s also a film that makes the most of its generational ensemble, with elders like Helen Mirren and Gillian Anderson appraising an earnest and commitment to the emotions they convey so boldly, while the youthful duo of Gheiser and Schwerdt downright stole the show from their veteran co-stars. Gheisar bestows an elegance and earnestness alongside a maintained French accent that feel decades ahead of her nineteen years of age, and in the palpable and evolving chemistry that she shares with Schwerdt, with his own charms in cadenced charisma that allow you to see him for far more than his debilitating injury, enacts a love story that we not only invest in, but one we downright root for against the overwhelming odds of Nazi opposition. Lastly, if there’s one thing the film carries over from its predecessor, it’s that it maintains the message of compassion and understanding, and how those qualities are the things that people remember the most about someone. It’s not exactly a difficult message to creatively attain, but I found the script marveling in quite a few varying degrees to how it pulled it off, practicing what it preaches with ingenuity, grace, and especially humanity, in ways that didn’t feel manipulative or shallow.

NEGATIVES

For a film that has so much going for it productively, I wish the same could be said for its script, which is a bit of an inconsistent mess at evading the inevitable problems that pop up with a story like this one. Overwhelming predictability is a major diffuser to something so compelling, especially with the obvious framing device of this grandmother telling the story from her childhood, which at the very least makes her safe, and at the most robs her of any kind of vulnerability that could’ve produced tension each time she’s in trouble. It doesn’t, so the movie turns to exploit this in other characters, to which it eventually finds in someone as obvious as it could’ve been, with the fate of this character being echoed by my own prediction in the film, at around the five minute mark. It’s also a script that doesn’t get off to the best of momentous starts, with an opening act that essentially serves as a reset button to fans of ‘Wonder’, who now find themselves with only one of the characters from that original film, and it was the asshole antagonist at that. Perhaps if Julian played a bigger part in the movie, it would’ve appraised value to the way the film uses him as the connective link between films, but he’s primarily deduced to a supporting role in a film that literally centers around him, bringing him back occasionally to cast a glancing emotion in response to the things he’s told from Mirren’s perspective, all the while decreasing his value with less and less dialogue along the way. I also found the characters outside of our youthful duo of protagonists to be very one-dimensional and hollow in not only the ways they’re portrayed, but also outlined, as only the things the film absolutely requires them to be, and nothing more. Most of the problem is that there’s no dimensions or versatility to the way these characters are explored, fitting somewhere between perfectly sincere angels, on the positive end of the spectrum, while the other quite literally being every kind of overbearing Nazi’s that you’ve ever seen in movies, with ruthlessness and insensitivity being their only distinguishing qualities. The thing is that these jerks are that way long before they ever took the uniform, with unnatural lines materializing out of nowhere in statements hammering home their lack of likeability with the subtlety of a hot dog eating contest. If the script gave them some interior conflict or even momentary lapses in judgment to inscribe some accidental humanity to the monsters continuously shown at face level, then it could’ve spoke wonders even louder about the overwhelming tragedy that crippled Europe during the time period, but this and the condensed scope of the story undercuts the real magnitude of Sara and the Jewish community’s adversity, which might be well documented outside of this film, but feels like a few neighborhoods in this film. Finally, I would be doing a grave disservice if I didn’t spoil one throwaway scene, featuring one of the most batshit endings to a Nazi officer that I’ve ever seen. There’s a part in the film where Sara evades her Nazi captors, with one eventually hunting her down at gunpoint, only to find that he is being hunted by a pack of wolves, which rip him apart. While there’s nothing terribly compromising to include this into the film, except some unintentional laughter elicited from my audience, it does point to the duo of film’s need to continuously cater to audiences in the most ludicrous of circumstances, where a story rooted in humility and humanity turns to outrageous to garner a sharp emotion, resulting in ill-timed resolutions that distract in moments the film deserves clarity.

OVERALL
‘White Bird’ isn’t quite as inspirational or endearing as its crowd-pleasing original, but it spreads its wings with gripping dramatic tension and sturdily seamless production values that allow it to take flight, while finding its way to the heart of its audience while its characters evade invading Nazi generals. At its center are a duo of youthful performances in Glaser and Schwerdt who manage to find love in a world stuck continuously in devastation, elevating the story and us with a universal language that isn’t judged or prejudiced by color or ethnicity.

My Grade: 6/10 or C