BEFORE: Since coming off this year's documentary chain and easing back into fiction films, my first three choices all share something in common, and that is that they're non-linear, to some degree. Or "stream of consciousness", as the description for "A Single Man" clarified. Sometimes I just say "overly flashback-y", it's all really the same thing. I tried very hard last year to keep track of all the films I watched that (over)-used this technique, and it was a LOT of them - but then I made a mistake and accidentally deleted the blog file I was using, and this was also the file I was using to keep track of how many appearances each actor had, it was a terrible loss. It took me days to re-create that file before the end of the year, and I even got busted for looking up actors on the IMDB during work hours, which might be one reason why I have one job right now, and not two. But that's neither here nor there. The point is, with the Blogspot interface, it's too easy to accidentally drag one file on top of another and replace it, which shouldn't be possible, if you ask me. This year I have a back-up file of my actors' appearances, just in case - the end of this year is fast approaching, and I have to be ready.
Julianne Moore carries over from "A Single Man".
THE PLOT: The tale of two children separated by fifty years - in 1927 Rose searches for the actress whose life she chronicles in her scrapbook, and in 1977 Ben runs away from home to find his father.
AFTER: A rare SPOILER ALERT if you haven't seen "Wonderstruck", because there's just no way for me to talk about this movie today without mentioning details that get revealed slowly, over time, in this one.
This film is from 2017, and if you remember, that was a big year for films with "Wonder" in the title - there was "Wonder", with Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson, which I watched earlier this year, also "Wonder Wheel", "Wonder Woman", and "Professor Marston & the Wonder Women". I'm pretty sure this is the last film from that year that qualifies. I've avoided this one the longest not just because of the split-timeline / flashbacky nature of the film, but also it seems to rely heavily on child actors, and that's a big gamble. Once in a while you find a child actor who's really capable and believable, but it's a rare thing - most child actors are terrible at disappearing into a role and therefore coming across as sincere. I don't know why that is, or perhaps it's why my perception of child actors makes it that way, but it's where I find myself. I was braced for the worst here, given that most children just don't have the emotional depth for acting - perhaps it's something that comes with experience, and kids just don't have that?
For the most part, my concerns were warranted - at nearly every turn, with the way that kids deliver dialogue, I was always, ALWAYS aware that they were saying lines. Acting should be close to invisible, it's not just about talking, it's about BEING, and a good adult actor knows how to BE somebody else, not think about what they're saying or how they're saying it, and sort of let the character take over. Losing yourself in the role, or else not caring how something is said, and just letting it flow. Most kids can't do it, but I'll admit there are rare exceptions. But there's an interesting twist here, which affects the dialogue in over half the film.
Today we're toggling between two storylines, one set in 1927 and the other set in 1977. And the 1927 scenes are presented in black and white, and without recorded sound. Which is interesting because that's the way that films were presented back then, before recorded voices were added to film stock, though with music that was often played live in the theater. At first I resisted this presentation in a modern film very strongly, because even though our cinematic records of this time appear this way, it's not an accurate depiction of real life then. There was color in the world prior to the 1930's, and people's voices made sound, even if we have no recordings of it. But we're all so accustomed to learning about the 1920's through old films, that it's very easy to think of those times that same way - without color and without sound. You may watch a modern film that's set in the 1920's, like "Once Upon a Time in America", for example, and feel a bit of a disconnect, but I believe that New York City was a colorful, loud, vibrant place, even back then.
I (eventually) got used to this film's depiction of 1927, but it wasn't easy - and for several reasons, that storyline seemed very hard to follow. Even the old films from that time had dialogue, only you had to read it on big cards that popped up every so often, which ultimately clears everything up about what someone just said, but also takes you out of the reality of the movie for a few seconds while you read it. What also justifies this in "Wonderstruck", however, is the fact that the lead character is a deaf girl, so she's not hearing what anyone is saying, and it's almost like we're in her noiseless, non-verbal world with her. But several times she's able to communicate with others by writing things down, only this had drawbacks, too - the words we need to read are not big, bold ones on title cards, but instead from pen on paper, and most of the time, I wasn't able to read the exchanged messages in time.
What I could read was very, very hokey - however. The girl writes "Help" on a little paper boat and sets it sailing out to sea, or she writes "Where do I belong?" on another boat and, umm, well, I couldn't really see the point of putting that boat where she did. As a matter of fact, a lot of the 1927 scenes are either extremely corny or sentimental - again, that matches what we know about the decade through short films from the time, but I'm not sure it matches real life.
At the same time (only it's not the same time at all) another child, recently orphaned Ben, in 1977 suffers hearing loss after an accident, and then runs away from home to find his father - and from the earlier scenes between him and his mother, all he knows about is father is that his mother wouldn't tell him anything. There must be a reason for this, but like Ben, we're completely in the dark about this - perhaps this is how it should be, and therefore we're as curious and desperate to find the answers as he is. But I've got issues with the sequence of events here, if I suddenly lost my hearing I'm not sure that would be the most logical time to run away from home to find someone I've never met. Especially when all the evidence about that person is so old, and flimsy, and questionable. Is it likely that a 10-year-old boy would have the ability to travel from Michigan to New York City on his own, after recently losing his hearing? It's a bit of a stretch, I think.
Meanwhile (only it's not meanwhile at all, it's fifty years earlier) the girl, Rose, also runs away from home, also arrives in New York, and tracks down the acclaimed actress, Lillian Mayhew. Throughout the journey we don't really know why she's trying to visit this actress, though we eventually do learn the why and the implications of this. (I'm attempting to preserve SOME of this story's secrets, but honestly, it's not very easy.) All we really need to know is that Rose felt unhappy living with her father, and after running away she eventually lived with her brother, but the film didn't feel the need to even mention that she HAD a brother until that information became important, because that's just how this story is being told, the director kept his cards very close to his vest, as they say, and all along, we the audience are being spoon-fed tiny bits of information, but only when necessary.
Some may find the toggling between the two storylines to be a bit too much - I sure did. Sometimes one story would only advance for a minute, or maybe even 30 seconds, before cutting back to the other story, where perhaps the other kid was in the same NYC location, or doing something similar. All this goes towards creating the illusion that the stories are happening simultaneously, which they are certainly NOT, or at least connected, which they may or may not be. Trying to guess WHETHER they are connected, or if so, HOW they are connected is really the main task here - and because so much information is withheld at every juncture, somebody really didn't want anyone to be certain about this until it was absolutely necessary.
Both children visit the Natural History Museum, for example. They look at some of the same exhibits. OK, maybe that's possible, but is it LIKELY? I found myself debating whether this whole this was way too coincidental, or whether receiving the answer to the puzzle, in retrospect, explains all of the coincidences which came before. Honestly, I'm still not sure if the end here justify the means, and I'll say no more about it. As far as the museum thing is concerned, two NYC museums are prominently featured in the story - in addition to the Natural History Museum, the Queens Museum of Art is shown, and one particular exhibit there plays a prominent role. Again, I don't want to say too much here but once museums open up again, I'm really not that far from this museum in Flushing, Queens and I'd love to pay it a visit.
But how about this for a coincidence? I planned this chain weeks ago, maybe even months ago, and I ended up watching a film about two deaf characters on the day that I went to pick up my own hearing aid. It's one thing when I schedule a film with a cameo of Jerry Garcia on the anniversary of his death, but it's a completely different feeling when something in a film intersects or collides with something going on in my personal life. It's a little eerie, slightly creepy sometimes. Now, I'd set this appointment up last month, I've been seeing various doctors and medical professionals in the ENT and audiology fields for over two years, and for various reasons, despite definite diagnoses of hearing loss in my right ear, I didn't get to any actual solution until today.
The first audiologist sent me to a hearing aid provider my insurance wouldn't cover, then I saw a doctor who wanted to operate on my middle ear, which freaked me out, then an entire medical conglomerate changed affiliations and wouldn't take my insurance any more, so I had to start over. I switched over to Mt. Sinai during the pandemic, and this time I stuck with it, saw two doctors and a hearing-aid specialist, and now I've got a hearing aid. Bluetooth compatible, I can adjust the settings via an app on my phone, plus music and phone calls can go straight to my hearing aid. So far so good, it's mostly just like having an ear bud in place all day long. The sound is somewhat artificial, but that kind of beats hearing nothing in one ear.
And if movie theaters & Broadway shows ever open up again, there's a setting on my hearing aid that can pick up the signals directly from the movie screen or from the stage production, assuming the theater is broadcasting a signal for the hearing-impaired. So I know it's only Day 1 with the hearing aid, but already there seem to be a ton of positives for taking this step, and not much of a downside. I'm lucky that I still have hearing out of the left ear, so if the hearing aid's on the fritz or I don't have the settings right, I can still hear, but I'm hearing better when it's in place, so there's that. I've been compensating for the hearing loss for the last couple of years (moving the phone to the left ear, for example) so despite all the testing, I didn't really know how bad the hearing loss was until I got the hearing aid in place and heard what I was missing. I can't compensate for the hearing loss, but at least I can amplify sound now so I can hear what's around me better - in the same way that a crutch won't replace your leg, but it can make walking easier. Now I've got to test it out on some movies.
NITPICK POINT: I just completely missed the point of having that female character, Janet (?) dressed up in Ben's mother's clothes. What the heck was the point of this? At some point I just felt this movie withheld too much information, and this is one of several things that could have been explained better, but just wasn't. Who was this girl, Ben's cousin? I don't even know. Where did she live, and why was she in a different house from where she was supposed to be, and why was she dressing up like somebody else? It's just a weird non sequitur, I guess. If you want to be vague about the 1927 scenes, that's fine, but this extraneous character doesn't play into the mystery at all, so we should at least have been told who she was and what the heck she was doing. There were several things I apparently missed, like WHY exactly Rose's father was mad at her, or WHY somebody needs to go to Minnesota just to figure out what wolves look like, but this whole Janet thing was probably the worst offense of non-storytelling.
Also starring Oakes Fegley (last seen in "Pete's Dragon"), Millicent Simmonds (last seen in "A Quiet Place"), Michelle Williams (last seen in "I Feel Pretty"), Jaden Michael (last seen in "Paterson"), Raul Torres, Tom Noonan (last seen in "Anomalisa"), Cory Michael Smith (last seen in "First Man"), James Urbaniak (last heard in "Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay"), Amy Hargreaves (last seen in "Shame"), Damian Young (last seen in "Everybody's Fine"), Morgan Turner (last seen in "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle"), Lauren Ridloff, Anthony Natale, Carole Addabbo, Howard Seago, John P. McGinty, John Boyd (last seen in "The Notorious Bettie Page").
RATING: 4 out of 10 shooting stars (which could become meteorites - OHH!! now I get it.)
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