Directed by Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Lelio, The Wonder is a religious mystery which begins with a disembodied voice telling the audience: “We are nothing without stories, and so we invite you to believe in this one.” Lelio has a history of provocative storytelling, with previous directing credits including the Academy Award-winning transgender story A Fantastic Woman, a lesbian love-drama called Disobedience set in an Orthodox Jewish community, and Gloria Bell, a divorce-themed musical comedy. Although his films are unlike typical Hollywood fare, they are prescriptions for further radical social change in as much as they describe the complex post-Christian landscape we all inhabit.
The Wonder, based on the novel by the Irish-Canadian writer Emma Donoghue, follows Lelio’s usual pattern, but with elements that will be of particular interest to Catholic viewers. Set in Ireland in 1862, it is the tale of a devout, docile girl named Anna O’Donnell (Kila Lord Cassidy), who upon receiving her First Communion decides to stop eating food. Four months later, she is alive and well, and the townspeople invite a sceptical English nurse named Lib Wright (an underwhelming Florence Pugh) to take turns watching the girl, along with a nun. Anna tells Lib that she lives on “manna from heaven” and the local leaders, including the parish priest and a doctor, set up a familiar modern dichotomy of faith and science. Whose storytelling method – whose superstition – will better explain the phenomenon?
Desperate for a new Irish saint in the wake of the potato famine, a girl who thrives without worldly sustenance appears to be a godsend. Moreover, many real stories of holy women who lived only on the Eucharist proliferated around this time. For example, Blessed Alexandrina da Costa of Portugal, Servant of God Maria Domenica Lazzeri of Italy, Venerable Marthe Robin of France, and Servant of God Floripes de Jesus of Brazil are all reported to have lived for a decade or more with no food apart from the Body and Blood of Christ. Nowadays, there are corners of the internet where one may find advocacy of “breatharianism”, whose adherents purport to receive all the nourishment they need from sunlight and water.
Lib tells Anna that fasting is normally just for one meal or one day, but Anna believes that her more extreme sacrifice, coupled with devotions given to her by her parish priest, will release the soul of her dead brother from Hell. Anna’s brother told his own stories to justify his disordered appetite, and their grieving mother has her own story, and her own strategy, for moving forward with hope. The audience eventually comes to learn why the O’Donnell family has good reason to believe Hell is where its eldest child is most likely to be. Although difficult to take, The Wonder’s depiction of the broken and grieving family is its strongest element. It is also a sobering reminder to religious people that piety is no guarantee of escaping hardship.
For much of the film, Lib fails to enter the reality that her patient inhabits, and her perspective is challenged by a local woman named Kitty – played by Niamh Algar, whose performance far outshines Pugh’s. At one point, Kitty rebukes Lib for trivialising the truth of Catholic sacraments. “That’s just a story. I’m looking for facts,” Lib says. Kitty fires back, “You also need your stories,” and pointing to Lib’s diagnostic notes, she concludes: “Quite the Bible you’ve got going.”
Lib struggles with her own secret losses, engaging in a regular self-medication ritual before she finds a sympathetic collaborator in the character of Will Byrne, portrayed by Tom Burke. Will is a local man who left Ireland for a journalistic career in London years earlier, and we learn that his parents died in the famine during his absence. Representing a bridge between Lib’s supposedly reasonable world and the town’s gullibility, Will at first exploits everyone’s weaknesses to tell his own tale in the press. But eventually he falls completely into Lib’s story, which has a thrilling denouement before a too-tidy conclusion.
The Wonder is far from an affirmation of the objective truth of Christianity, but nor is it an exaltation of a superior worldview offered by modern science. Lelio should be commended for engaging even somewhat sympathetically with religious people and their supernatural beliefs. The film is intriguing in its insistence on the power of story, but it is also a frustrating experience for viewers exhausted with the presentation of truth as only a story that varies with each storyteller.
Moreover, while Catholicism is by no means completely discredited in the film, Lelio finally implies that the old Ireland depicted on screen will have to look somewhere other than to miracle stories for future inspiration. The cinematography, costumes and sound design are all first-rate, and anyone looking for a gripping period drama will not be disappointed. For those looking for something to believe in, however, The Wonder misses the mark.
Andrew Petiprin is fellow of Popular Culture at the Word on Fire Institute
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