IF ‘WONDERSTRUCK’ HAD ONLY STRUCK AT END AS IT BEGAN

By Dominique Paul Noth

Millicent Simmonds in the black and white segments
of "Wonderstruck."

Two-thirds of “Wonderstruck” is fascinating film-making, teasing us with skilled cinematography and a haunting sound mix as it flips between journeys 50 years apart – one in black and white, one in color.  

The 12 year old girl’s destination is New York City of 1927 and then we see the boy on the same quite different central Manhattan streets in 1977.  The ‘70s color is often garbage-strewn garish until the magically calming halls of the museum of natural history, which are also roamed in the 1920s period. 

Cinematographer Edward Lachman has made doppelganger contributions.  Without using silent film limitations but mimicking the mood, Lachman models the 1920s period’s pace and crowds in a remarkable black and white virtuosity aided by revealing soundtrack.   The stark visual bounce between decades almost tells the story by images alone.

In the 1920s, the face of the young actress playing Rose, Millicent Simmonds, conveys not the sentimentality of her search for a beloved silent screen actress but an intensity and anger.  In the 1970s Oakes Fegley as Ben is equally determined and centered on his search, though the backgrounds looks different. His mother has died – except in flashbacks by Michelle Williams – without revealing to him what has happened to his father.  That’s why Ben has run off to New York from Minnesota to search -- and 50 years apart the two children touch the same meteorite at the museum.

Technically this story is a mystery.  We don’t know what will connect these two children so far apart in generations, the girl naturally deaf, the boy stricken deaf by a freak lightning strike at age 12, though obviously deafness and a passion for museums are elements in common. 

What ties these two together, for those who have not read Brian Selznick’s book, is not explained for a long time, only dropping hints. Yet there is a mood of mutual similarity as each roams the streets on a mysterious mission. We are fascinated by the differences as well as the steps in common. 

In this storytelling sense, “Wonderstruck” is quite striking film-making, forcing the eyes and ears to work harder on the nuances than any dialog could alone. I expect the failure to reveal what this is all about will frustrate some in the audience, but I loved the intellectual confusion.

However, director Todd Haynes has made the puzzle more emotionally satisfying than the resolution, as if dancing around the subjects with the full technical glories at his disposal was more interesting than explaining why we are on these journeys. Turns out the explanation is a plot-heavy letdown.  That extended fault keeps the film from becoming a masterpiece.

For a time, the best time in this film for my money, we understand the children more from the hypnotic leisure of their searches and the wonderful contrasts and similarities of Manhattan in these generations.

Julianne Moore in color portion of "Wonderstruck."

When the plot catches up with the intellectual playing and starts unraveling, the film’s power is reduced into melodramatics.  The ending lacks much of the panache and mystery that kept us in the game, though it seeks to retain the same overview that life is like a mysterious cosmos of desires closing in on all of us – the falling stars of the end reminiscent of the museum meteorite.

Another youngster, Jaden Michael, provides personality as Ben’s sudden friend. All the children are excellently cast to go directly after their goals. Some performances are finely conceived. Conquering the plot simplistics built into both her roles, Julianne Moore plays Rose’s actress mother and Rose herself in old age. It takes two actors to essay Rose’s brother – Cory Michael Smith, carrying a Harold Lloyd look and manner in the 1920s and then Tom Noonan as a bookstore owner.  

It is a shame the ending doesn’t maintain the punch “Wonderstruck” set us up for.

About the author: Noth has been  a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also  for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He also created its Friday Weekend section and ran Sunday TV Screen magazine and Lively Arts as he became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs and Internet and consumer news. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org.  In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  He also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee.