WHITE BIRD Reviewed by GREG KING
Director: Marc Forster
Stars: Ariella Glaser, Orlando Schwerdt, Bryce Gheisar, Gillian Anderson, Helen Mirren, Patsy Ferran, Ishai Golan, Jem Matthews, Stuart McQuarrie, Olivia Ross, Jo Stone-Fewings, Priya Ghotane, Jordan Cramond, Teagan Booth.
White Bird is a sort of sequel to 2017’s Wonder, the drama which starred Jacob Tremblay as Auggie, a young boy with a disfigured face, alongside Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson as his loving and concerned parents. At school Auggie was bullied by a fellow classmate named Julian (Bryce Gheisar). This film is based on the 2019 YA graphic novel written by R J Palacio which was developed as part of a series tangentially exploring the extended universe of Auggie.
White Bird focuses on Julian (Gheisar, reprising his role from Wonder), who has been expelled from his former school for bullying. He is trying to fit in at his new high school but is still haunted by old social media postings. He is then visited by his grandmother Sara (Helen Mirren), a renowned artist who is in town for a retrospective of her artwork. She tells him a story about her experiences as a young Jewish girl growing up in France during the time of the Nazi occupation, with the intention of giving him a lesson in the importance of kindness and tolerance and compassion.
A series of extended flashbacks take us back to France in 1942 when the young Sara (played by Ariella Glaser) lives in a picturesque village with her well-off family. While her doctor father (Ishai Golan) tries to warn her about the likely hardships with the Nazi occupation of France and the growing tide of anti-Semitism to prepare her for what is about to happen, her mother (Olivia Ross) keeps putting on a brave face reassuring her that there is little to worry about.
But then one day German troops arrive at the church run school she attends with a list of Jewish children that they need to arrest. With the help of the school’s sympathetic headmaster (Stuart McQuarrie) Sara and the other Jewish children hide until it is deemed safe for them to run off into the nearby forest.
But they are all rounded up, apart from Sara who is helped by her classmate and neighbour Julien (Orlando Schwerdt, from the recent Children Of The Corn, etc), a boy paralysed in one leg by polio. Julien has always been picked on at school by some of the older boys, especially the school bully Vincent (Jem Matthews), on whom Sara has a crush. Julian hides her in his family’s barn. His kind and sympathetic mother Vivienne (Gillian Anderson) cares for her and ensures she is fed.
Julien helps her with her education at night by painstakingly recreating the day’s lessons for her. The two also pass the time by creating fantasy worlds. Sara is also a gifted artist. Sara is warned to not leave the barn because their neighbours are suspected of being Nazi sympathisers. She spends a year hidden away in the barn, which gives this part of the narrative a claustrophobic Diary Of Anne Frank-like vibe.
Vincent enthusiastically embraces the Nazi ethos of hate and abusive power, and his dislike of Julien sets in motion a train of events that ultimately leads to tragedy.
White Bird is another of those Holocaust movies that sees events from a child’s more innocent perspective. It is more sanitised with the very real horrors of the war toned down to make them more palateable for younger audiences (and it makes a fine companion piece for films like The Boy In The Striped Pajamas and The Book Thief, etc).
Director Marc Forster (Finding Neverland, etc) handles the material with restraint that makes for a potent and engaging story. Nonetheless this is still a darker film than Wonder. Faithfully adapted by screenwriter Mark Bomback (Live Free Or Die Hard, etc), the film explores themes of cruelty, injustice, sacrifice, forgiveness, humanity, the cycle of hate and intolerance, but it also manages to deliver an optimistic and positive note that seems even more relevant in today’s world.
This is a handsomely mounted production and the widescreen cinematography from Matthias Koenigsweiser (A Man Called Otto, etc) is crisp, and he does a great job of bringing the setting alive. Thomas Newman’s string driven score is both evocative and stirring.
The two young leads are quite good in their roles, and they give the material its emotional heft. This is Glaser’s second film role following her debut in 2019’s little seen Radioactive, and she is fine in the more emotionally demanding role. Anderson is solid in her role, suffusing her character with a sympathetic touch, while Mirren lends gravitas to her role.
White Bird is a potent and quite moving film, and another fine addition to that subgenre of the Holocaust drama.
★★★☆
