Wonder Review - Two Words. Five Stars.

Wonder is like the boy it tells the tale of. It’s special, soft, gentle and is so fragile and ethereal. A simple story, starring Jacob Trembley, Julia Roberts, Owen Wilson, Izabela Vidovic and helmed by Stephen Chbosky (of How I Met Your Mother fame), is so fantastic, yet so heartbreaking. While watching it, I remained captivated, so much so, that tears filled my eyes as the last shot rolled. The film isn’t heavy on story. It’s based over one school year, which goes by very fast. Chbosky does this with the help of quick, fast and fun montages that aren’t only beautiful frames and catchy background music, but these too have been so delicately put together, that they’re embedded with emotion.

Roberts is Isabel, Wilson is Nate, Trembley is Auggie and Vidovic is Via (short for Olivia). Auggie has a rare condition, where he has a malformed face. This prevents him from entering the mainstream schooling sphere. Isabel teaches him, until she puts on a brave face, and declares that he has to go to school. Auggie’s scared and Trembley beautifully captures his hesitation to enter the big, bad world he’s heard so much of. Now, no doubt, Chbosky or the actors haven’t come up with a great story. You’ll have to credit that to writer of the source material of the same name, RJ Palacio.

Being a reader of that book four years ago, I felt that this one was an apt homage to the wonder that that book was. Still, Auggie’s story is very interesting, but what Palacio realised and Chbosky utilized was that while it was courageous, they couldn’t fill up their stories with every single day of Auggie’s courageousness. So, every character is given equal weightage. An equal stage to share their beautifully layered emotions. My favorite being the track of Olivia, her boyfriend and her ex-best friend, Miranda – all played by able actors. While Auggie’s trials and tribulations take place in school, the rest of the family has their ups and downs. But, in Auggie’s storyline, given that extra time on screen, flourishes in the form of Jack Will (Noah Jupe), Miranda who is Via’s best friend (Danielle Rose Russel), Julian (Bryce Gheisar) and Summer (Millie Davis) along with a track from Charlotte (Elle McKinnon) and Mr. Browne (Daveed Diggs), Mr. Tushman (Mandy Patinkin), and Via’s boyfriend, Justin (James Hughes).

They all beautifully emote the fragility of human beings. How awful and sickening we can be towards our own species. The film also sheds a light on the American schooling bully system, which is still prevalent in today’s day and age. With Auggie’s condition, I would like to salute the filmmakers. Since this is targeted to be a children’s film, they’ve found the balance between too little and too extreme. While reading the book, Palacio never gave us actual graphic representations of how Auggie, who had Treacher Collins syndrome, looked, leaving it to us and our graphic imaginations. Here, they perfectly capture Auggie, so you don’t wince every time you see his face.

The actors are all fantastic, but my favorite were Julia Roberts as Isabel and Owen Wilson as Nate. Both of them imbued their characters with such innocence that you had to care for them. Cry with them. Even when awful things happened, they stayed strong. You have to salute parents of children with disabilities for keeping a cool-head even when their kids have gone through something. I know I do. They both are so fragile, so funny, so well-written and so tired, wanting their son to have a better life, and thinking, “Is that really too, too much to ask?” The both of them imbue these characters with charm and love. A salute to them too.

Wonder, at 113 minutes, is very short. It deserves your time, it deserves your attention and it deserves 5 stars. It’s a sweet, short, loving film that will leave you with joy in your heart and waterfalls of tears in your eyes. If you hadn’t guessed it, I’m giving the best film I’ve seen in 2017, 5 stars out 5. It’s fantastic. Go watch it. (It’s so good, that I think the Hindi parallel to it in 2017 is Lipstick Under My Burkha).