Vanity: Victorian Period Drama Review Netflix's "The Wonder"

Taking the real historic phenomena of fasting girls who claimed they could survive without food that were reported throughout Ireland after the Great Irish Famine, an adaptation of a novel “The Wonder” is available on Netflix.

The brief plot summary is an English nurse, Mrs. Elizabeth Wright, played by Florence Pugh, is hired to watch over a fasting girl, Anna O’Donnell, in Ireland. Mrs. Wright was with Florence Nightingale at Scutari during the Crimea War. An Irish reporter for the Daily Telegraph, Mr. William Bryne, shows up at the village to do his own investigating. The story has the typical science v. faith conflict with a not surprising outcome.

Throughout the movie we learn the three characters mentioned above and others have experienced soul breaking trauma and the impact that trauma has on their lives. In the case of Mrs. Wright, she engages in a bizarre nighttime ritual that includes the use of laudanum. The movie explores how stories are important to our lives and for providing purpose. The characters due to their trauma have their stories broken off. “The Wonder” is about how Anna, Mrs. Wright, and Mr. Bryne find in each other a way to start a new story and be re-born.

The movie is suffocating occurring in a bleak remote Irish village. This village is not in some picturesque part of Ireland as one would encounter in David Lean’s “Ryan’s Daughter” or the recent “Banshees of Inisherin”. This is windswept moor and peat bog country; reminiscent of the Yorkshire moors of “Wuthering Heights”.

“The Wonder” has a bookend beginning and end that involves breaking of the fourth wall and Mrs. Wright eating on a journey. The beginning one has Mrs. Wright dressed shabbily eating in steerage of the ship taking her to Ireland. The ending is a 180 degree opposite. The character with her new story and purpose is transformed, dressed in fine clothing, and enjoying an elegant first or second class dinner on the ship taking her to Australia. Yes a standard plot device used by many of the great Victorian authors, for example Dickens and Mary Elizabeth Braddon, of characters going to Australia, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, for a 2nd chance at life.

The performances were good enough to keep my interest for the almost 2 hour run time. Toby Jones and Ciaran Hines are part of the cast.

Out of a rating of 1 to 5 bonnets, I would give “The Wonder” 3 bonnets. The rating is based on I having no desire to have to re-watch a rather bleak movie. Also, the movie has an anti-religious tone as many acts that would be called evil are being committed or tolerated in the name of faith. The director being from South America brings that anti-clerical baggage into the story.

I enjoyed it. It's better than 90 percent of Netflix's originals. Toby Jones, Ciaran Hines and Florence Pugh are all pretty good in the film, with Ciaran Hines being the standout. Florence Pugh's character is a bit too modern, but I think that's a fault of the script, not the acting. The freethinking, scientific minded young woman is going to outpoint the backward Irish provincials.

It's been a while since I watched it (at the Middleburg, VA Film Festival, i.e. a pleasant drive out to the countryside with dinner thrown in, just before release -- which is a fun way to see a movie).

As I recall it, however, I think you are a bit too harsh in your comments about the anti-religious tone. The Church is not the villain. The locals are confronted with an apparent miracle. A panel of elders, led by Ciaran Hinds as the priest, has convened to examine "the wonder." What sticks in my memory is that the range of opinion on the panel is quite appropriately mixed. These older men are not credulous fools, but they begin with the plain evidence before their eyes: the young girl hasn't eaten for months, yet she remains healthy. They don't see obvious cheating, although a couple of skeptics are suspicious. The others do not discount miracles -- their faith teaches them that miracles are real -- but none of them has actually seen a miracle. They would be thrilled to witness one, but they are fearful of being tricked and made to look like fools. They harbor a hope, but they want confirmation by an independent, expert authority, an outsider who is presumptively impartial.

These are not unreasonable men. They all admit that they do not understand what they are seeing. And the girl seems healthy -- at least initially, until the tough cop shows up. And then they face a tricky moral dilemma: the girl begins to weaken, but she still refuses to eat. Should they force feed her?

This is actually a scenario that recurs from time to time in fiction, and probably in real life. Hard headed, skeptical observers can misread the evidence. Harry Houdini would have spotted the trick straightaway. Village elders are not trained magicians. Even Florence Pugh's character, a tough minded, independent young woman with a commitment to the scientific method, Victorian style, does not catch on quickly.

Again, the Church is not the villain. There has been an antecedent moral failure leading to downstream complications, and that's as far into spoiler territory as I want to go.

It's a lot better than most of what is on Netflix.

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