The Lord works in mysterious ways, and Christians are fond of telling us. Even more mysterious is the question of faith, a uniquely human idea that operates on the principle that phenomena we cannot explain are true, not because we understand them but because we do not need them.
Set in 1862 with an almost medieval feel, “The Wonder” asks audiences to think about the meaning of a miracle. Is it possible, as religious residents of a small Irish community believe, for an 11-year-old girl to live for four months without food? The child, Anna O’Donnell (Kella Lord Cassidy), suddenly stopped eating, and swore that she has since been feeding on “manna from heaven.” As the word for these “miracles” spread, pilgrims came to see the phenomenon for themselves. Understandably suspicious, the local authorities invite an English nurse, Lib Wright (Florence Pugh), to monitor the situation.
Lieb is an outwardly stoic but melancholy soul on the inside who may herself be in need of rescuing, she is a modern-minded woman. She’s confident Anna couldn’t be this healthy without eating maliciously, but there’s no way to prove it. (Technically, it’s as dirty as it may sound: Instead of focusing on what goes into Anna’s mouth, she can easily put it to rest by checking if anything comes out of the other end. Anyway, the movie works better if It was one person’s faith against another.) Lieb insists on logic, which means there must be some kind of deception, while the city’s doctor (Toby Jones) and his all-male board (including the district priest, played by Kieran Hinds) They believe in divine intervention.
With “The Wonder,” Sebastian Lelio, the talented Chilean director responsible for “Gloria” and its new English-language release, “Gloria Bell” (as well as the Academy Award-winning 2018 film A Fantastic Woman), made a fair but ultimately implausible show. Excerpt from Emma Donoghue, co-written by the same author (with help from Alice Birch). The book has been published within the past decade, but it does its best to evoke its mid-19th-century setting, as does Lilio, who pushes with rude handmade costumes, dreary, candlelit interiors, and mud-strewn Midland sites so hard that you forget you well. This Netflix original content is streamed on your iPad.
How, then, do we explain Brecht’s film framing tool? Lelio opens on a sound stage, drawing our attention to the craft: “Hey, this is a movie called The Wonder,” the woman welcomes (supporting actress Niamh Algar, so compelling in small doses, she wishes she had more to do here). This unusual introduction reminds that the movies are not real, but their emotions can be. “We invite you to believe in this,” continues the narrator, as she tracks DP Ari Wegner (“Lady Macbeth”) from a farm assigned to a ship’s dock to find Pugh, a deeply personal.
It’s not clear what the film gains from this self-conscious setting, especially since Lelio continues to give the mostly female cast enough space to make their characters feel real. Once Lieb arrives in Ireland, the film adheres to her reality. Just a few years ago, the Irish Potato Famine hit the region, starving nearly a million people, and food is still precious in most people’s minds. “The Wonder” doesn’t overemphasize this, though you can sense Lieb’s frustration when her employers call her away for whatever porridge was to be her first meal at the boarding house where she’s staying (a place with nearly a dozen feeding hungry mouths).
Lieb soon learns that she is not the only nurse they have dealt with, although the other is not a medical expert; She is a nun. The two women take turns watching Anna and reporting on their findings. Although Lilio’s approach is politely serious, it is common practice to send an expert to examine someone who exhibits paranormal behavior, such as an “exorcist” or a “sixth sense.” But “Wonderland” is not a horror movie. Nor is he the type to be skeptical about what you see (another familiar device in such films, where the director can bend the rules of nature to suit his point of view). When I first met Lip Anna, I was impressed by the girl’s conviction. Theists often have the serenity with which atheists cannot empty their fears to a higher power. Cassidy, eerily embodying Anna, engages in this peace. But the girl is not without secrets.
To make her study more scientific, Lieb forbids any kind of physical contact between Anna and her parents. Almost immediately, the girl’s health begins to deteriorate. Here, the movie seems to suggest that Lieb is justified in her means: she’s getting to the truth. But it’s her base that puts Anna’s life in danger, and the way she solves the situation (with the help of a London journalist, played by Tom Burke) is morally corrupt and unjustified – a third party decides what’s right for someone else’s child.
The ‘right thing’ is relative, especially when it comes to religion, and deconstructing Lieb’s decision would surely have made a stronger film – something like Ian McEwan’s ‘Children’s Law’, in which a judge must choose whether to intervene on behalf of a terminally ill child who refuses His parents are Jehovah’s Witnesses cured. Instead, Liliu offers us scenes of Leib sipping opium alone in her room, petting a pair of little socks – a reminder of the personal tragedies she carries with her and a justification of sorts for the film’s deeply miscalculated ending, as they are stuck in living one story able to replay. Invent themselves in a new story of their choice.
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