The Wonder is a new film by Chilean director Sebastián Lelio, who seems to specialize in strong, courageous women in films like Gloria and A Fantastic Woman.
This one is a story, we’re told in a sort of Brechtian, fourth wall-toppling opening, about our need for stories.
Photo: Screenshot
Nurse Elizabeth Wright, played by Florence Pugh, has recently returned from the Crimean War, and has taken a new job. She journeys from England to a small village in Ireland, where she’s brought before the local bigwigs.
Leading the panel are a Catholic priest – Ciarán Hinds - and a slightly less Catholic doctor – Toby Jones.
The job requires round the clock observation of what may or may not be a miracle, a ‘wonder’.
Her name is Anna O’Donnell, and she seems to be either a religious or a scientific phenomenon – she hasn’t eaten for four months.
Elizabeth is bewildered that 12-year-old Anna - a simple girl living out on the moors with her parents and one maid-servant – is being groomed for sainthood. Already many of the faithful are flocking to meet her.
What the village and the church need is positive proof, which is why they brought in an outsider to vet Anna, along with a local nun.
On the one hand, it’s a well-paid two weeks at a time she really needs the money, but on the other, Elizabeth starts to be concerned that the child is in danger – even if the child herself can’t seem to see it.
Anna assures Elizabeth that she has no need for earthly food, she has spiritual manna from Heaven.
It’s one thing to judge simple country folk for believing the unbelievable. The Catholic establishment also has a vested interest in a local celebrity, and the income she could bring in.
But out in the world, the unbelievable is happening all the time. Science is making all sorts of giant steps in the nineteenth century. Could Anna be part of that?
Is it a miracle? Is it a hoax? It all depends on who’s telling the story.
Meanwhile Elizabeth has her own story. She keeps mementoes of her damaged past, right next to that staple of all gritty, Victorian stories - the bottle of laudanum.
Another person with a vested interest in the story of The Wonder is a local boy who made good – or at least made it out.
Will Byrne’s now a journalist in London, but he’s back in his hometown to cover something that – true or nonsense – is undoubtedly a story.
Will is played by another well-established young actor, Tom Burke. And it’s the actors – particularly Pugh – who have the job of keeping us, first wondering, then engaged.
The gimmicky beginning of The Wonder feels a bit unnecessary. I think most of us can understand the dangerous appeal of stories without having someone putting cinematic quotation marks round it.
But Pugh, as always, is wonderful and reminds us why not particularly special stories can be elevated by the presence of someone out of the ordinary.
A Wonder, they used to say in the nineteenth century, though these days we prefer “a star”.
