Movie Details
The Wonder (2022)
Director: Sebastián Lelio
Cast: Florence Pugh, Tom Burke, and Kíla Lord Cassidy
Movie type: Mystery/Thriller
Release date: 2 September 2022
IMDB Rating: 6.6/10
Languages: English, German, Spanish, French, and Italian
Duration: 1h 43m
Trailer
Synopsis
Where is Rimsy when you need him? Netflix’s period drama The Wonder has been out for a few weeks now, but we’ve only just gotten around to it, and you should know that the writer of the following isn’t into slow art dramas as much as this picture should be. Either that or director Sebastián Lelio’s latest film just isn’t as good as it probably should be. In any case, we will try to find out what is more likely on the following lines.
The Wonder tells the story of a young nurse from England who, in the second half of the 19th century, travels to an Irish village to verify a miracle there. A certain girl claims that she hasn’t eaten in several months. If this were true, then this fast is the work of God. If not, the church is in for a shame that will have to be covered up. In the lead role, we once again watch the excellent Florence Pugh, whose performances regularly underline that she belongs to the most talented actresses of her generation. But even she doesn’t save everything, and what at least initially seems like an interesting plot with the potential for a strong confrontation between religious beliefs and harsh reality, slowly turns into a dull observation of the Irish hills, superfluous romance, and the traditional clichéd dealing with the ugly past.
Perhaps the biggest problem is the fact that Lelio’s film, despite its pleasant 108-minute footage, fails to capture the core of the problem, and certainly not the broader context of the time it tells about. Nevertheless, in addition to that, he goes into other less attractive topics, which give the impression that they are there only to fill the space and disrupt the otherwise excellent “one-woman show”. As if too much free space for Pugh is bad. In reality, of course, it’s the other way around, because when the film lets Pugh act, there’s little to fault. Especially in the first half, when nurse Elizabeth gets to know the locals, investigates the relationships and also the running of the girl’s family, and wonders why on earth she was called to this completely obvious shed, the pace is sensibly slow, the atmosphere is thick and the questions pile up sympathetically.
However, as time goes by, mostly unsatisfactory answers start coming. In addition, it starts to creak from the side of the dialogues, when all the interactions between Elizabeth and the miraculous girl unexpectedly quickly start to seem repetitive and without any significant shifts, which applies to everything else in this film. The worst thing is that trying to sell that fast as a real miracle never quite works here. From the beginning, you can guess what is really going on here, and why the main character will later act the way he does. What’s the point, it’s nicely shot, but you don’t watch such movies because of the nice camera and solid set.
The creative choice to inform the viewer that they are watching a film work right from the start is also interesting (not necessarily bad). Through the narrator, who speaks several more times during the film before finally showing up (from the studio where it was filmed), the director conveys a relatively banal message to the viewer that everything depends on what stories we interpret from each other. It is such a construction and a parallel to the main plot, which is simply there in the film, although it does not serve any fundamental purpose. I take it more as another proof that the director was too concerned with the form and trying to shoot something overly clever, which is unfortunately evidenced by the conclusion itself, which brings down the previous events with the sovereignly most unnecessary twist I’ve seen in a long time. At the same time, real overlap is painfully absent.
The main thing, i.e. investigating someone’s faith, revealing its essence, what shaped that person, why people act in the sense of some higher entity and in the belief that they will be rewarded for their objectively bad deeds, all this is paradoxically on the sidelines. And when it happens to be their turn, any clash and any confrontation feels shorthand and without emotion. At the same time, I don’t feel that I didn’t like the film or that I wasn’t interested in its message, quite the opposite! For example, when Martin Scorsese in Silence or Paul Schrader in First Reformed introduced me to their view of faith, I absorbed every word (although in the case of the former, there weren’t many of them…). But here, in short, the creators do not say anything interesting or revealing, and they do not say it in a rather tiresome way.
The Wonder is indeed a slow, ponderous film with a lot to ponder. But at the same time, it is full of unnecessary efforts to appear smarter than it is. At the same time, there is an absolute minimum of real wisdom in it. It was precisely the vast difference between intention and reality that was the most killing factor for me in this work, because of which I simply could not enjoy the contemplation, even though everything was in order on the formal side. It’s not exactly a bad movie. But it is also far from a miracle.
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