Wonderstruck
(USA, drama-family-mystery, 116 min., Rated PG for thematic elements and smoking). Based on a novel by Brian Selznick (“Hugo”), it’s the tale of a Midwestern boy and a young New York girl, separated by 50 years, and the link that connects them, which includes a famous screen actress (Julianne Moore). “Stars glitter and worlds collide in Todd Haynes’s ‘Wonderstruck,’ a lovely ode to imagination and to the stories that make us who we are. A cleverly bifurcated tale of two children, it starts in 1977 with Ben (Oakes Fegley), a boy of about 10 in rural Minnesota. He’s in mourning for his mother (Michelle Williams in flashback) and has a question mark — an absent father — that needs solving. First, though, there’s David Bowie on the turntable and a lightning strike that leaves Ben deaf. Fearless and resourceful, Ben splits for New York to find his father. Ben’s story-twin, whose life and adventures curiously mirror his own, is Rose (Millicent Simmonds, a discovery), a 12-year-old deaf girl in 1927 who yearns to escape her lonely, cosseted life in Hoboken, N.J. To that end, following in the footsteps of countless other dreamers, she, too, flees to New York. In “Wonderstruck,” a children’s story about finding your place in the world, in time becomes a Haynesian exploration of identity, desire and imagination.” – New York Times
