The Wonder (2022 | UK | 103 minutes | Sebastián Lelio)
As an English nurse hired to witness a possible miracle in rural Ireland, Florence Pugh is a steely presence in The Wonder, Sebastián Lelio’s adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s novel. Set about a decade after the Great Famine, a spiritual detective story of sorts emerges in a remote village where a young girl has seemingly survived for months without eating as an act of religious devotion. A council of serious men — physicians, town elders, a priest — decree that a two week round-the-clock observation by two nurses taking eight hour shifts is the only way to determine whether the feat is divine intervention or some sort of hoax.
With her scientific training and cerulean dress, Pugh’s Nurse Wright stands out among the drab earthtones and insular attitudes of the village. She’s certain that the young girl (Kíla Lord Cassidy, giving a haunted and determined performance as Anne) can’t possibly be surviving without nutrition, but the terms of her contract demand that she only observe, never intervene. She speaks to the curious and seriously-minded girl, whose days are spent whispering prayers and studying the saints, and inspects every nook and cranny of her person and cottage for an explanation of how she remains alive. When the girl’s once unnaturally good health begins a rapid and occasionally gory decline upon the imposition of stricter isolation, Wright is confronted with a choice of violating her non-intervention pact, convincing the stubborn men to end the experiment, and solving the riddle of the pious girl who seemingly refuses a bite of food.
Each faction comes from a place of deeply held belief and experience; so untangling the mystery lies in navigating the murky currents of their vying motivations. Lelio casts the starvation story in a mode of gothic horror that’s constantly revealing itself among the desolate landscape. Through her own nightly rituals and a developing relationship with a newspaper reporter with his own dark history with the town, we gradually learn the tragedies that shaped the resilient nurse. As the stakes rise to pit earthly life and death against faith and the fate of immortal souls, we come to realize that the solution to the puzzle lies in tending to the needs of others by first coming to understand their root causes. Pugh’s exceptional performance elevates the fever pitched material from a creepy detective story to a stirring reckoning of faith and reason.
A previous version of this review ran when The Wonder premiered at the Telluride Film Festival over Labor Day Weekend; it is not available on Netflix.