The Wonder movie review: Florence Pugh is excellent in this film by Sebastian Lelio about religious obsession and those questioning it.
The opening sequence of Sebastian Lelio’s The Wonder initiates on a modern film set, and the camera pans to demonstrate the background of yarn in the Irish Midlands of the 19th Century. It is Niamh Algar’s voice that steers us through the context of the land devastated by the Great Famine. “We are nobody without stories, and so we submissively request you to trust in this one.” It feels rather excessive in magnitude as if the filmmaker is knowingly envisioning the impossibility of discontinuing the conjecture around this story. Yet, believe in this story we must, as The Wonder, adapted by Emma Donoghue’s titular work, ascends above its fourth-wall-breaking opening to evolve a richly atmospheric and eventually rewarding work.
The opening scrapes straight to Florence Pugh’s face, who recreates Lib Wright, an English Nurse who is being summoned to Ireland to document a miracle. It is the year 1862. An 11-year-old girl named Anna O’Donnell (Kíla Lord Cassidy) has been enduring without food for four months. She is to look after the girl for two weeks and inform back to the self-appointed committee of men (played by Toby Jones, Ciaran Hinds, and Brian F. O’Byrne). On arrival, Lib discovers that a nun named Sister Michael (Josie Walker) has been called too, who would look after her during the night. When she encounters the girl for the first time, she says that she is outliving through manna from heaven. Her mom Rosaleen (played by Cassidy’s actual mother Elaine) conveys to her that her daughter doesn’t need to eat. Lib is flabbergasted at the extremely religious lifestyle of the family, her skepticism reminiscing ours. She routinely checks on the girl, her unbelief rising as she becomes close. A journalist named William Byrne (Tom Burke) also emerges, keen to write a piece on the girl. He has a story too, that will be a connecting fleece to the intervention that will assure later.
No matter how it discloses itself like a thriller to assemble on this incredulous occurrence, The Wonder is less inquisitive in finding Anna’s verity. Lelio, working with co-writer Alice Birch and Emma Donoghue, employs the central conceit to create a modern interpretation of the divide between fact and faithfulness, philosophy, and pragmatism that exposes itself like a problematic slow-burn drama. Pugh is astonishingly held as Lib, anchoring our own incredulity as well as processing her own. The Wonder discloses itself firmly through Pugh’s face, as she links the dots on the ground of her observations. Watch her face as she quivers under the stupefaction of the truth when it discloses itself, and manages the condition consequently. Pugh is administered by the company of Cassidy as Anna, who delivers the breakout performance of the film as a girl caught up under the unsubstantial weight of religious obsession. The edgy, haunting score by Matthew Herbert drives the internal distress, whereas cinematographer Ari Wegner’s deft use of light and shriveling out makes it look like a horror film in advancement.
Although The Wonder initiates and ends with a meta-resolution that is compelling, it might feel a little too frustrating in the middle. Lelio is absorbed firmly in the dilemma of the story, and how stories assemble themselves in order to drive ahead. Most of the action, save for that exquisitely recognized last half, remains interior. This is a stimulating, delicately political flick that cements Lelio as one of the most courageous filmmakers of the era. It aids profoundly because of Pugh at the center, extremely building on to uncover the dangers of persuading ourselves with our own acumen of truth and reality.
