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WONDERSTRUCK
***
Dir: Todd Haynes
Starring: Julianne Moore, Michelle Williams
(PG 109 mins)
The director of Carol turns his arthouse hand to YA fiction with this adaptation of Brian Selznick’s book. Often visually sumptuous, the film can’t avoid a nagging tweeness and sentiment and a tone that doesn’t sit easily with kids or adults.
The film tells two parallel stories, one shot in black and white and set in the silent movie era of the 1927, the other in 1977, all period detail and flares. Both stories contain a deaf character, runaways who leave their homes and go on a journey which takes them to New York. They both have elements missing from their childhoods; Millicent Simmonds plays Rose, deaf since birth in 1927, whilst Ben, played by Oakes Fegley, is recently deaf thanks to a bolt of lightning in 1977.
Both seek an absent parent. Rose wants to reconnect with her silent movie-star mother, played by Julianne Moore, whilst Ben is seeking out his father, whom he has never known, following the death of his mother, played by Michelle Williams. They both end up at the American Museum of Natural History and gain two protectors, Rose her brother, Ben a Hispanic boy who believes the museum to be a mystical place. Julianne Moore, a regular collaborator with Haynes following Days of Heaven and Safe, also plays the older Rose in the 1977 segment, with aging makeup used rather ungainly in the part, though she’s much more successful as the silent movie star.
The film looks sumptuous – there’s a fantastic score from Carter Burwell and a wondrous animated sequence at the end – but Wonderstruck feels a little insubstantial, gloriously rendered but lightweight. Thus the big emotional pay-offs do not land as heavily as they should and the plot contrivances stick out. The youngsters are strong in their lead roles, as are the adults, but the story is the issue. As idiosynchratic as all of Todd Haynes’ work, but unfortunately, ultimately unsatisfying.
words Keiron Self
Out now in cinemas