reviews, Hollywood, Wonder, Stephen Chbosky, Jacob Gtremblay, Julia Roberts, Owen Wilson, cinema, movie, Deepa Gahlot
Jacob Tremblay is an amazingly talented kid — with films like Room, Before I Wake and Book Of Henry behind him. In Stephen Chbosky’s Wonder, he plays a boy with facial deformities and gives a performance that holds the heart-tugging film together. In the film based on a book by RJ Palaci, he plays Auggie Pullman, a brave boy who has undergone numerous surgeries for his congenital disfigurement, but still has a face that is lop-sided and looks sewn together. In a culture that worships looks above all, an ‘ugly’ face can prove to be a problem in adjusting with other kids, who can be as thoughtlessly cruel.
Ugliness, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder and Tremblay makes Auggie so endearing that after the first wince, you don’t find his looks distracting. The film does not set out to disturb, however, and is designed as a story of compassion, without any mawkish excesses. Till he is ten, Auggie is tutored by his mother Isabel (Julia Roberts), but she and the boy’s father Nate (Owen Wilson) decide that he has to go to a proper school at some point and interact with others; he can’t live in isolation forever.
The other kids at the school he joins, treat him like a freak, and that is hard on a kid, especially one used to the love and sensitivity of his parents and sister Via (Izabela Vidoovic), who has teenager problems of her own. The kindness of his teachers is as remarkable as the courage of the kid who is so self-aware that he can bury his anguish under humour.
Even though the film is meant to be feel good, there is something sincere about the emotions it portrays, the relationships and betrayals. Of course Auggie is a hero, and there is no taking that courage away from him. This is a film that parents should see with their kids, so that they can learn that normal can mean different things to different people, and that a person’s appearance cannot be the only yardstick for his (or her) personality.