Wonderstruck

Review by Anton Bitel @AntBit

Directed by

Todd Haynes

Starring

Julianne Moore Michelle Williams Oakes Fegley

Anticipation.

Todd Haynes and Julianne Moore reunited!

Enjoyment.

Elegantly mounted, but also twee and mawkish.

In Retrospect.

A curator’s egg.

Todd Haynes’ wistful adaptation of Brian Selznick’s novel is a tad too saccharine for its own good.

“You really do live in a museum,” complains single mother Elaine (Michelle Williams) to her son Ben (Oakes Fegley), whose bedroom is festooned with the souvenirs, mementoes and detritus that he has curated over the 12 years of his life.

Museums form key locations in Todd Haynes’ Wonderstruck, which lets its two quest narratives, set 50 years apart, unfold in cross-cutting parallel until they eventually merge into a single, complex cabinet of curiosities whose disparate exhibits all suddenly seem intimately interconnected. This is a film which offers the world in microcosm, and a cityscape filled with secrets and personal histories, so that all of New York City is revealed to be one giant, awe-inspiring museum where everyone, even if they do not quite realise it, belongs.

In 1927, at the dawn of the “talkies”, young, profoundly deaf Rose (Millicent Simmonds) runs away to New York City in search of the silent- screen star Lillian Mayhew (Julianne Moore). In 1977, with his recently deceased mother now just another of his collected memories, young Ben, also deaf after being struck by lightning, runs away to New York in search of the father he never knew. Brian Selznick’s original 2011 novel tells Rose’s story in pictures and Ben’s in words.

For his film, Haynes deploys the monochrome presentation and stylistic techniques of a silent film for Rose’s adventures, while revealing Ben’s in vibrant ’70s colour, occasionally accompanied by the same jazz-funk instrumental (Eumir Deodato’s ‘2001: Also Sprach Zarathustra’) to which, two years later, Chauncey Gardner would emerge wide-eyed into New York in Hal Ashby’s Being There. The implication of this intertextuality is that Rose’s and Ben’s stories are just two of eight million in the Naked City, all linked through a warm, fuzzy humanity.

The result is something of a curate’s – or curator’s – egg. Wonderstruck posits an absurdly benign view of old New York (where the only predator is a purse snatcher). But perhaps this, as well as the stories’ retro timeframes, is to suggest that the film itself is an idealised museum piece, like the natural history diorama that stops Ben in his tracks. It is difficult to escape the impression that what attracted Haynes to this project is the challenge of recreating not just one but two period Big Apples – plus a mannered stop-motion third once his two worlds have collided.

This is all executed with real verve, showcasing a range of filmmaking styles and all at the service of a sweeping, even cosmic, story. Yet it also, despite the many emotions on display, feels a bit stuffy and soulless at times. Arranged within the film’s structure there is another silent movie, a book about museums (itself called ‘Wonderstruck’), sketches, exhibits, models and handwritten notes (which serve as ‘intertitles’ for the hearing-impaired characters). But all these clever, multiple-media layerings are not enough to prevent Wonderstruck ultimately privileging the word over the image, and relying excessively on its deafening verbal exposition.

Published 4 Apr 2018

Tags: Julianne Moore Michelle Williams Todd Haynes

Anticipation.

Todd Haynes and Julianne Moore reunited!

Enjoyment.

Elegantly mounted, but also twee and mawkish.

In Retrospect.

A curator’s egg.

Suggested For You

Carol

By Sophie Monks Kaufman

Todd Haynes’ period romance starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara is a beaming masterpiece.

review LWLies Recommends

Todd Haynes: The Amorous Imagination

By David Jenkins

From Brief Encounter to his upcoming Peggy Lee biopic, the Carol director muses on a variety of subjects.

How Safe shows the realities of living with an incurable illness

By Stephen Puddicombe

Todd Haynes’ 1995 film stars Julianne Moore as a woman who becomes “allergic to the 20th century”.

Little White Lies Logo

About Little White Lies

Little White Lies was established in 2005 as a bi-monthly print magazine committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them. Combining cutting-edge design, illustration and journalism, we’ve been described as being “at the vanguard of the independent publishing movement.” Our reviews feature a unique tripartite ranking system that captures the different aspects of the movie-going experience. We believe in Truth & Movies.

Editorial

Design