The Wonder (2022)

Often when a movie starts out with voice over, I get a little worried. Oh no, they could not figure out how to show me this information. Here, though, we get a little set up speech while showing the movie setting up, sets being constructed on a stage. The Wonder sets out right front in telling the audience that they are watching fiction, a trickery, yet does that make it real?

     An English nurse makes her way to Ireland to watch over Anna, a young girl who has not eaten for four months. Her family call it a miracle, a few behind closed doors call it a hoax, but the town wants to know for sure. 

     Right away you see how the nurse stands out against this community. She's in bright, or as bright as it can be, blue against various shades of grey, black, and green. A flower among the earth tones. Her view of science against the views of the church and general faith of the land will be tested, we are told.

     And that is the heart of this. Faith versus science. We know people starve to death, yet this girl is not. How is she getting food? Why would someone go through all this deceit? Is she really faking at all? The nurse is told to "prove its nonsense, then fuck off home." An unwanted person asking unwanted questions.

     The nurse has her own problems, of course. At night away from the eyes of others she gets fucked up on opium and cries for a deep loss. The preasense of baby shoes is a bit on the nose, but there's a reason it is effective. Those tiny shoes matter.

     That pain does link her to the community, to the story. She's in deep and hurting, and so is Ireland as a whole. The time period this is staged in is not far after the Great Famine, and starvation is a key factor in the story. The background of our nurse's love interest is that he left to become a journalist and his whole family starved. The girl Anna is starving. The country as a whole is still starving and hurting for it.

     By the end, we see a healing taking place through a central theme. Renaming, reorganizing one's self after trauma. The mana from heaven becomes less about someone forcing their care on you and more about letting a flower flourish in bright colors among the drab.

     A depressing but good watch, interesting use of narrative. Check it out.