Four stars. Rated PG, for no particularly reason
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.10.17
This one is pure magic.
Wholly enchanting.
Elaine (Michelle Williams) marvels, each evening, that her son Ben (Oakes Fegley) has crammed even more stuff into the amateur natural history museum disguised as his bedroom. |
Director Todd Haynes orchestrates
this slice of fantasy with the exquisite touch of a master conductor who
understands the importance of each note played by every instrument. The music
analogy is apt, because this film’s many delights include Carter Burwell’s
amazing score: a continuous symphony of drama and delight that tells the story
just as skillfully as the talented cast.
Haynes uses everything: images,
sounds, music, color, puppetry, sketches and much, much more. All are blended
with grace, whimsy and a true sense of wonder (with apologies for riffing on
the title).
Such a talent for imagination —
along with a delicate touch — are essential for anybody embracing the challenge
of bringing a Brian Selznick book to the big screen. Martin Scorsese succeeded
masterfully, with his 2011 adaptation of The
Invention of Hugo Cabret (the film title shorted to Hugo). Now Haynes has duplicated this feat.
Selznick adapted his own book
this time, and we shouldn’t be surprised by his skillful scripting debut. His
“bookmaking” novels, replete with illustrations, are de facto screenplays to begin with: presented with a master
raconteur’s gift for filling the readers’ minds with their own private movies.
I hesitate to explain anything, because Haynes and Selznick
coyly tease and toy with us viewers: establishing little mysteries that
surround the two primary characters, while mischievously using the cinematic
form to dangle clues via sidebars, dreams, flashbacks and all manner of
narrative trickery.
Our protagonists are Rose
(Millicent Simmonds) and Ben (Oakes Fegley), rebellious young adolescents
somewhat askew from social norms. Both are lonely; both have transformed their
bedrooms into veritable museums of stuff, all carefully notated, indexed and
catalogued. Both are curators — an important term, for what follows — of their
possessions, and of their discontent.
Rose endures a privileged life
with a disciplinarian father (James Urbaniak) who shows her the warmth he might
bestow upon a house plant. She finds solace by filling her bedroom with
impressively detailed cityscapes constructed from paper and glue, and by
scrapbooking the career of actress Lillian Mayhew (Julianne Moore).
Ben, having just lost his mother
to a traffic accident, chafes at having to live with his aunt, sharing a room
with his snotty cousin. Flashbacks reveal the bond that Ben shared with his
free-spirited mother, Elaine (Michelle Williams), and the patience with which
she puts up with his bedroom having grown into what feels like a branch of the
nearest natural history museum.
But she stayed mute on one
subject that dominates Ben’s thoughts: the identity of his father, who remains
a nameless, faceless unknown. She
knew, but always put Ben off, promising to reveal all “when the time was
right.” Now, of course, the “right” time never will come.
Ben lives in the rural Minnesota
community of Gunflint Lake; it’s the summer of 1977.
Rose lives in Hoboken, New
Jersey; it’s early autumn in 1927.
Haynes cross-cuts between the two
storylines, with distinct styles appropriate to each era. Ben’s saga takes
place in color, with the hustle and bustle of ambient sound; his environment
and cultural obsessions are appropriate to the time. Rose’s exploits unfold in
monochrome, and without dialogue; emotion and narrative flow are enhanced by
Burwell’s score and Simmonds’ incredibly expressive face.
The effect is much like the
silent movies that Rose attends, in order to bathe in another melodrama
featuring her idol, Lillian Mayhew.
While exploring his mother’s
belongings one night, Ben chances upon a carefully wrapped New York City
souvenir book; it contains a bookmark inscribed to Elaine, and signed “Love,
Danny.” Could this be his father? Determined to find out, he sneaks away from
his aunt and boards a bus bound for the Big Apple.
Rose, dissatisfied with merely
scrapbooking Mayhew’s career, and seeing her as no more than images on a
screen, thrills at the discovery that she’ll be starring in a Broadway stage
play. The girl sneaks away from her father, and heads to New York.
The contrast, as they
independently reach New York City, is striking. For Rose, it’s a dream come
true: every bit as amazing — most particularly the theater district — as she
imagined in her wildest dreams. Her eyes dance; her giddy smile never falters.
Ben hits a New York City Transit
Authority station at the height of 1970s squalor and mayhem: a chaotic jumble
of bustling activity that turns his quest — to find an independent bookstore
that might not even exist any more — into an overwhelming nightmare.
And that’s all you’ll get from
me.
Simmonds is achingly endearing in
this impressive acting debut, her trusting little face melting into shattered
chagrin when something disappoints her: a shift that’s physically painful to
watch, given the skill with which she conveys emotion. She’s both plucky and
vulnerable; there’s something about the way cinematographer Edward Lachman frames
her, in monochrome, that makes her seem more fragile than usual. Her every move
has us heart, mind and soul.
Fegley’s Ben is a tougher and
more resilient, but at the end of the day he’s still a kid. Although
undoubtedly comfortable and assured in his native town, being dumped into big,
bad New York City is a tall order for any outsider, let alone a 12-year-old.
Nor is this fish-out-of-water alienation Ben’s only challenge; he’s also
operating at less than peak efficiency, for reasons that won’t be disclosed
here.
More to the point, Ben has pinned
all hope on something he knows is highly unlikely. As time passes, we see the
bravado leak from Fegley’s face, his gaze growing increasingly nervous and
worried.
As was the case with the similarly
young protagonists in Hugo, Rose and
Ben are thrust head-first into an adult world that too often is marked by
loneliness, confusion and regret. And yet — and yet — Haines shapes his young
stars’ performances in a manner that reassures us: These kids never lose their
sense of magic and possibility.
Moore obviously had a great time
over-emoting in the clips we see of the Lillian Mayhew melodramas that keep
Rose transfixed in a movie theater. But Moore’s finest moments come in this
film’s third act, reminding us of the nuanced and oh-so-precise performance she
delivered under Haynes’ earlier guidance, in 2002’s “Far from Heaven.”
Williams makes the most of her
brief flashback moments, particularly during one disarmingly poignant scene
shared with Fegley, when Elaine gently tries to deflect Ben’s questions about
his father. Jaden Michael is high spirits and unbridled enthusiasm as Jamie, a
friendly and helpful boy Ben encounters in New York City.
Cory Michael Smith — recognized
as the dangerously unbalanced Edward Nygma, on TV’s Gotham — is the opposite here: warmly trustworthy as Rose’s compassionate
older brother, Walter.
Burwell’s thoroughly engaging
orchestral score notwithstanding, Haynes also makes excellent use of a few
iconic source songs, most notably David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” and Eumir
Deodato’s jazz re-imagining of Richard Strauss’ “Also Sprach Zarathustra.”
Aside from the intensity of our
involvement with Rose and Ben, this is a film — and story — for people who love
books, music, museums, curios, lists and, well, stuff. Haynes and Selznick deftly blend everything with often
ingenious creativity; I’ve not even mentioned production designer Mark
Friedberg’s flat-out awesome miniatures and dioramas, or the impact of the
Queens Museum’s amazing “Panorama of the City of New York,” built for the 1964
World’s Fair.
Although the highlights of
Haynes’ film are legion, I’ve no doubt that some viewers will find it too slow,
ludicrously contrived and eye-rollingly sentimental. Such individuals deserve
our pity; obviously, they’ve forgotten what it’s like to believe in — and
embrace — the giddy delights of true magic.
Wonderstruck would make a terrific
double feature with Hugo. I can think
of no finer compliment.
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