Orlando Schwerdt, left, and Ariella Glaser star in White Bird: A Wonder Story.Larry Horricks/The Associated Press
White Bird
Directed by Marc Forster
Written by Mark Bomback from the book White Bird: A Wonder Story by R.J. Palacio
Starring Ariella Glaser, Orlando Schwerdt, Bryce Gheisar, Gillian Anderson and Helen Mirren
Classification PG; 121 minutes
Opens in theatres Oct. 4
If only White Bird could just stick to being a Holocaust story. If only director Marc Forster’s maudlin attempt at wrangling one of the most devastating chapters of the last century into a teachable moment for tween audiences were left to operate on its own whimsical terms. It would have at least been bearable, functional even; an addition to the narrow field of movies making that particular history palatable for a grade school audience – think The Boy in The Striped Pajamas and The Book Thief.
But it’s not just a Holocaust story. Instead, White Bird is a bit of brand extension, a spinoff from the hit 2017 tear-jerker Wonder.
The earlier movie, adapted from R.J. Palacio’s bestseller, starred Jacob Tremblay in a contemporary story about a sweet child with craniofacial abnormalities who yearns for acceptance at his new school. The new movie, expanding Palacio’s sequel White Bird: A Wonder Story, tells a similar story about bullying and tolerance, only it’s set in Nazi-occupied France. Take the flimsiest thematic connections and a groan-worthy framing device, and voilà, the Holocaust has been recruited into the Wonder Extended Universe.
If you’ve read the book or seen White Bird’s mawkish trailer, which has been bouncing around online for more than two years while the long-delayed movie struggled to stick to a release date, you’ll already know the convoluted setup at work. Remember Julian, the bully in Wonder played by Bryce Gheisar. He’s at a new school, anxiously navigating the environment and its social order, having to decide whether he’ll be turning his nose up at the “losers” or turning over a new leaf. No better time for Helen Mirren (as hammy as ever) to turn up as Julian’s grandmère Sara. She’s an artist visiting from Paris, ready to narrate her experience with the Nazis so that her grandson can learn to be nicer in the school cafeteria.
The movie comes alive, in as much as a syrupy YA take on the subject matter can, when turning back the clock a century to young Sara. She’s played wonderfully by almond-eyed newcomer Ariella Glaser as a typical preteen living the French provincial life: riding her bike along the cobblestones and quaint tree-lined paths or frolicking in fields where CGI bluebells bloom and an artificial sunset glows. That is, until the Nazis storm the town to round up all the Jewish citizens.
The sequence in which Sara narrowly escapes a raid on her school is sufficiently thrilling, a reminder that Forster is actually a solid action director. He’s perhaps most famous for his Oscar-winning drama Monster’s Ball and the fanciful J.M. Barrie biopic Finding Neverland. But he also staged some spectacular sequences in World War Z and the unfairly maligned Bond sequel Quantum of Solace (give some love to that abstract gunfight at Tosca).
GIllian Anderson is criminally underused as Julien's mother in White Bird.Courtesy of Lionsgate/The Associated Press
White Bird is less 007 and more Finding Neverland by way of The Diary of Anne Frank. The movie is largely contained to the barn where Sara hides from the Nazis, with help from a boy named Julien (Orlando Schwerdt). He’s a polio survivor who walks with a crutch and was the primary target for bullying until antisemitism became the European preoccupation. Sara finally sees past his disability after he comes to her rescue and sees to her survival with support from his parents (among them, a criminally underused Gillian Anderson).
As Sara and Julien bide their time in the barn, escaping into their imagination, Forster keeps himself interested by turning the movie into an ode to cinema. Sequences where Sara and Julien use a lantern for hand shadows, draw flip books and eventually perform Charlie Chaplin are just affectionate enough to melt my cynicism.
But these moments are periodically interrupted by Mirren’s meaningless narration. Her interjections often state the obvious and serve little to no purpose beyond dutifully reminding us that this story is connected to a brand. It’s as if she’s saying, “from the people who brought you Wonder.”