Film: White Bird Cast: Ariella Glaser, Orlando Schwerdt, Bryce Gheisar, Gillian Anderson, Helen Mirren, Jo Stone-Fewings, Patsy Ferran, Stuart McQuarrie Director: Marc Forster Rating: 2.5/5 Runtime: 120 min ADVERTISEMENT A fairly moving tale about kindness during Nazi brutality, this film is an adaptation of a YA graphic novel, “Wonder Story” by R.J.
Palacio. A largely period set-up, this film has Helen Mirren playing a glorified cameo as the older woman who was once a young Jewish girl, Sara, caught in the crossfires of Hitlers Progrom in Nazi- Occupied France. Grandmere, as she is now referred to, tells her poignant story to her grandson, a highschooler, Julian Albans (Bryce Gheisar) who was suspended from Beecher Prep for being a bully.
She is obviously trying to highlight her own survival during that dastardly period because of the kindness of a French family and their son, her schoolmate, who took great risks to keep her safe. Her grandson’s eventual capitulation doesn’t ring true or work up any emotion though. The narrative begins with Julian’s rustication and shift to a new school before setting up the central conceit about 15 year old Sara’s (Ariella Glacer) eventual escape after spending a year and more in hiding, beginning in the fall of 1942.
Marc Foster’s narrative takes the earnest, sincere and fairly interesting route to telling this story. But the development of it is a little fractured and unsatisfying. We don’t really get to experience the clo.