Attribution: Fernando de Sousa from Melbourne, Australia, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Little Girl Lost: Movie Review of The Wonder
By Geoff Carter
The beginning of Sebastian Lelio’s The Wonder, an historical drama based in post-famine Ireland, is—strangely—framed with a shot of the movie set on which it is being made. A female narrator speaks directly to the audience, telling us of that “the characters we are about to meet believe in this story with complete devotion” and that we are “nothing without stories”. The camera then pans to a small set within the huge sound studio and the narrator continues with the introduction to the story—that it takes place shortly after the Great Famine and centers on an English nurse travelling to Ireland on her own.
It’s not unusual to see films using frame narratives. Titanic, Forrest Gump, Little Big Man, and Stand by Me are only a few of the more famous examples. In those cases, the framing typically sets the audience up for flashback narrative. Others, like The Princess Bride, prepare us to dive into a different fictive world. The Wonder, however, seems to do neither. Making the audience aware that this is a film and that stories are important seems, at least on the surface, redundant. They know they’re watching a movie and that the characters are invested in the story. So why underline the point?
The Wonder is the story of Elizabeth “Lib” Wright (Florence Pugh) a stalwart English nurse who has been commissioned to monitor an unusual case in the Irish countryside. It begins with her journey from England to Ireland. It’s a messy trip, muddy and raining, and involving a lot of open-air travel. Still, through it all, Wright maintains a stalwart dignity—a quality for which Ms. Pugh (brilliant actress though she is) seems to be particularly qualified.
Nurse Wright arrives in the town and goes before the council which has summoned her. It turns out they want her to observe—nothing more—a local nine-year-old girl who has eaten nothing for the past four months. They need verification that she is indeed not eating—and may be a possible miracle in the making, and so they deem she must be watched twenty-four hours a day. Lib is to alternate this duty with one of the local nuns, but she is skeptical of the entire situation, especially when the two watchers are told not to communicate.
Because of the Irish resentment toward England in the wake of the Great Famine, Nurse Wright is treated with no small amount of disdain by the locals, but she is unintimidated and determined to do her job. She visits the rural farm of the O’Donnell family where the young girl, Anna (Kila Lord Cassidy) lives. Nurse Wright asks some pointed questions to Anna’s mother Rosaleen (Elaine Cassidy—Kila’s actual mom), her father, and her sister. Rosaleen vehemently denies that there is any trickery, that her daughter has actually not eaten for four months.
Anna herself is a gentle soul who seems to have unquestioningly accepted her strange fate. Her faith (the faith of a child) is bone deep and seems unshakable. She is visited constantly by those by those who believe she could very possibly become a saint, a status that is not lost on the town committee that hired Elizabeth.
Nurse Wright is unable to discover how Anna is getting nourishment. As time goes on, the two grow closer. Anna asks the nurse what her family calls her to which she replies, “I have no family.” She also states using a different name would change who she is. Anna persists and Nurse Wright eventually tells her that she was called Lib by her family.
Lib is approached by William (Tom Burke) a journalist from London who is covering the story of the miracle girl—and who is just as skeptical of her as Lib. He persuades Lib to let him meet Anna and writes a story about her. About this Lib realizes that Anna is being fed by her mother directly from her mouth (like a mother bird) during their evening good night kiss. Anna confesses this is her manna from heaven. Nurse Wright prohibits the family from having contact with the girl whose condition then begins to worsen.
Lib confronts the committee with her discovery but is rebuked and told her job is not to reach conclusions, that she is only there to watch the girl. Anna’s condition worsens and Lib realizes she is dying. Dr. McBreatry (Toby Jones) ignores her pleas to help the child.
Anna’s mother, believing that Anna’s sacrifice will mitigate her dead son’s time in purgatory, refuses to resume feeding her. The committee, eager to extol Anna’s sainthood, also will not act. William publishes a story stating Anna is dying and lays the blame on those closest to her. Lib realizes she can no longer simply watch and takes action.
The Wonder walks a very thin line between melodrama and historical drama. At the beginning of the film, the story behind Anna’s fasting seems to be a mystery, a sort of medical detective story, but then, as the town and Anna’s mother’s private motives became clear, it becomes a martyr’s story and then a cautionary tale about the destructive power of faith.
When it’s revealed that Anna’s dead brother—for whose soul she is giving up her life—repeatedly raped her in the past, it becomes a story of exploitation. The narrator’s line “we are nothing without stories” resonates deeply as these sordid tales of ambition and greed are revealed. Lib and William’s own tragic pasts—their stories—also play into Lib’s decisions and the movie’s final act.
By tiptoeing—quite deftly—along this very thin line, balancing skepticism with faith, ambition with charity, and decency with desire, Lelio transforms the narrative from a mystery into an examination of the societal forces willing to sacrifice a life of a young girl for their own selfish ends. Lib’s story becomes a narrative of feminist empowerment. Lib no longer can only watch her ward die; she takes action and through shrewd manipulations, is able to save her patient.
The performances in this film are nothing short of phenomenal. Florence Pugh is a force to be reckoned with. She is a stoic, tough, committed professional who has nursed fighting men during wartime. She is skeptical and she is relentless, but then, when we see her alone in her room, in the depths of her grief, Pugh exhibits a vulnerability so deep and profound we can only imagine what she’s gone through. And then, as she learns the truth behind Anna’s starvation, when her desperation and fear stir her into action, she—without crossing the line into melodramatics—becomes (with her new name) another person entirely.
Lelio’s direction is for the most part, tight and controlled. When the film takes a left turn revealing Anna as a victim and her family and friends as predators, it is deftly and shrewdly done. His contrast between the fasting Anna and Lib, who seems to be eating in every other scene, is informative. The one, fed by faith, is starving. The other who lives on reason, thrives.
As Anna, Kila Cassidy is a marvelous blend of goodness, curiosity, and naivete. She is so completely forgiving (and clueless) of her brother’s transgressions that she is indeed very saintlike. The committee members, composed of acting veterans like Toby Jones, Ciaran Hinds, and Brian F. O’Byrne, do exemplary, though all too abbreviated work.
The Wonder, especially in its final explanation of the title—yet another of Lelio’s left turns, is a wonderful and surprising film. Parts of it reminded me of the Bronte classic Jane Eyre. The period piece, the woman alone thrust into an unknowable situation, but Nurse Wright was not the helpless orphan confined to the will of her master. She is her own woman. She is another wonder.