WONDER -- a film review



WONDER  -- a film review



I’m yet to come across anybody who hasn’t seen WONDER, a family drama, now playing in town.


Based on a New York Times bestseller ‘Wonder’, a novel by R.J. Palacio, the movie is about August Pullman (Jacob Tramblay), Auggie for short, a boy who shuns the world and hides behind an astronaut’s head gear to escape the stares he gets from others. Born with facial deformity at birth that is irreparable and home -schooled by his mother Isabel (Julia Roberts), Auggie steps out into the real world to join middle school at his father’s insistence for the first time in life. Needless to say, he is rejected and avoided like the plague by his peers but shows quiet courage ignoring and standing up to bullying by some. 
Interestingly, his fertile and active imagination helps him surface through all the cruelty meted out to him.

Directed by Stephen Chbosky, the movie gets sentimental and makes it irksome to realize sometimes how bullying in school can devastate a young child and his loving parents.

From the ‘pretty woman’ Julia Roberts has graduated to being a mother who agonizes over her child’s pain and fears to face the real world. Owen Wilson as Nate was convincing as Auggie’s father, providing comic relief at times when things get out of hand, sharing the child’s traumas and encouraging him to ‘give it back to them.’ Olivia or Via, Auggie’s older sister, is well played by Isabela Vidovic. There are moments when we share her pain as the hurt and neglected older child but never for a moment does she give up on her brother’s courage to win in spite of his deformity.

Dealing with prejudice and bullying the weak, devastating betrayal and traumatic catharsis that can cement forgotten relationships -- the film escalates to the pitch of believing in goodness that still lies in our hearts.  Indeed the film’s transformative power is also its script co-written by Chbosky, Steve Conrad and Jack Thorne -- albeit a little clichéd at times. 

Also the predictability of the conclusion seemed a bit of an anti-climax to me.
Yet one has to admit that it’s a feel-good movie that a whole family can see together.


Dola Dutta Roy ©  Kolkata, Dec. 2017

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