You can appreciate the artistry and the fine acting and the timeless messaging in the beautifully filmed coming-of-age drama “White Bird” without having seen the Julia Roberts-Jacob Tremblay movie “Wonder” from 2017, but the connection between these two very different films is quite unusual and absorbing and will infuse “White Bird” even more meaning.
In “Wonder,” a boy named Julian, played by Bryce Gheisar, relentlessly bullies 10-year-old Augie (Tremblay), who has a rare facial deformity, and is eventually suspended. Julian’s horrendous mother says he won’t return to this school. By this time, Julian has come to realize the impact of his actions, and he’s beginning to feel true remorse.
Both “Wonder” and “White Bird’ are based on children’s novels by R. J. Palacio. The adaptation of “White Bird” begins one year after the events of “Wonder,” with Julian (once again played by Gheisar) now enrolled at an elite prep high school in Manhattan, where he has a bit of an unsettling first week. In a sulk, Julian goes home to find his parents have gone out (they’re always going out) and his Grandmère Sara, a renowned artist who is to be honored at a museum retrospective, has arrived from Paris.
A word here about grandmother. She is played by the magnificent Helen Mirren, who affects just a touch of a French accent to her very British tone and we go with it because this is what they’ve done in movies for decades and also, she’s Helen Mirren. When Julian says he’s just trying to fit in and that’s been his motto since he left his old school, Grandmère Sara tsks and says, “Julian, you did not leave your old school, you were expelled, for being cruel to another boy.”
Sara has never really spoken about her own experiences when she was Julian’s age, but she says for his sake, now is the time, and we flash back to the central story set in 1942, with 15-year-old Sara (Ariella Glaser) living with her loving parents in middle-class comfort in a town in the Alsace region of northeast France. This is outside the German-occupied zone of France, but Nazi banners are prevalent, and anti-Semitism is increasing by the day.
When Nazi forces swoop in to round up all Jewish residents, including Sara’s parents, Sara escapes from her school in a harrowing sequence, with the help of her classmate Julien Beaumier (Orlando Schwerdt), who has polio and has been ignored or derided for years. Julien’s parents, Vivienne (Gillian Anderson) and Jean Paul (Jo Stone-Fewings), keep Sara hidden in the barn, away from the prying eyes of neighbors they suspect are informants, and do their best to give her a makeshift home of sorts.
With Sara confined to the barn, Julien brings home lessons from school, and they strike up a strong bond. Julien’s mother also becomes close with Sara, doing all she can to make the girl feel like she’s with people who deeply care for her even as she hides from the Nazis and wonders if she’ll ever see her parents again.
Sara is already a talented artist — she keeps a sketchbook filled with drawings — and she has a vivid imagination, which she puts to use in an unabashedly sentimental scene in which she and Julien climb into his parents’ car and pretend to be driving around Paris. (Even with the gravity of the material, “White Bird’ at times takes on an almost magical, fantasy feel, invoking a commonly used theme of using one’s imagination to at least temporarily escape the harsh realities of everyday life.)
Directed by the esteemed Marc Forster (“Monster’s Ball,” “Finding Neverland,” “World War Z”), with a screenplay adaptation by Mark Bomback (“Live Free or Die Hard,” “Unstoppable,” “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes”) this is a prestige project worthy of the inspiring and original material, not to mention the gifted cast. (This is the second time in two weeks we’ve had films with an Oscar-winning actress looking back on her experiences in World War II, the first one being the Kate Winslet-starring “Lee,” which was based on a true story.) Late in the flashback story, there’s a scene that’s jarringly different from the rest of the film (though it’s in the book), a scene that feels more like something from a dark fantasy story than a wartime docudrama.
If you’ve seen “Wonder,” it will add some depth and context to the viewing experience, but with the surehanded direction from Forster, the excellent script by Bomback and the strong performances from the veteran actors as well as the younger faces, “White Bird” flies quite well on its own.