Wonderstruck (2017)

Brian Selznick wrote the screenplay here, based on his own YA novel. Among other things (a good many other things, including deafness, cinema, and nostalgia), Wonderstruck is director Todd Haynes’s love letter and odd meditation on museums and curation. Arguably it works, visually enchanting of course, and some good music, but it’s hampered all the way by an overly busy narrative scheme. I was not entirely surprised to find that Selznick’s only other credit on IMDb is the source novel for director Martin Scorsese’s 2011 ode to silent cinema and other dreams, Hugo. I haven’t seen Hugo since it came out and thus don’t remember it well, but I often felt like I was having a déjà vu while watching Wonderstruck and I’m pretty sure Hugo was the source of it. Wonderstruck is not one but two period pieces—one set in 1927 involving Rose (Millicent Simmonds), the deaf daughter of a silent movie star, and the other set in 1977 involving a boy, Ben (Oakes Fegley), whose librarian mother has recently died unexpectedly before she ever told him who his father is. Ben now wants to find him. A freak lightning strike has recently made him deaf. Things like that happen in this one. Both Ben and Rose are about 12 and both end up running away to New York City. I was very nervous about Ben in New York in 1977—sure enough, he’s soon robbed. But things tend to fall right for both of our characters. Ben makes a friend about his age who can hear but also happens to know sign language. Ben doesn’t, but still, it comes in handy. The 1927 scenes are black & white and many establishing shots often look lifted directly from silent movies. The 1977 scenes are in color but it’s hazy and suffused with yellow and orange tones, like The Wonder Years. There are some familiar faces here—Julianne Moore, Michelle Williams—but mostly this is the same kind of dreamy soft-focused feel-good picture that Hugo is. It took a long time for these characters to reach me, but eventually I got there. If the closing scenes made me reach for a hanky, I’m dutybound to report it was more by way of manipulation than any genuine merit to the story. The story has points of genuine merit, but they tend to be lost in the complications as the two stories drive to their connecting point by way of a series of outrageous coincidences that are strictly for those who want to believe. I’ve read that Haynes likes to classify his stuff as alternating “boy” and “girl” movies. With Carol the immediate predecessor that would make this a “boy” movie. Ben probably does get more of the screen time, but Wonderstruck is not so easily classified.