‘The Wonder’ Film Review: Florence Pugh Stuns as a Woman of Science in a Community of Faith
03.09.2022 - 07:19
/ thewrap.com
th Century, haunted by unspeakable grief under the recent shadow of the Great Famine. As if to tell a bedtime story, a voiceover softly requests us to consider the complete devotion in which the dwellers of “The Wonder” believe in their own truths.
As we’d soon find out, one side would be charged by mathematical facts and modern science; the other, by Catholic faith.Lib Wright (the astonishing Florence Pugh, in a delicately searing performance) is firmly in science’s corner as a top English Nightingale summoned to a remote Irish village for a well-paying yet mysterious duty. After an arduous journey across seas and sweeping landscapes of mist and sward, all cuddled by the masterful Ari Wegner’s dewy cinematography of muted, buttery watercolors, the nurse faces an all-male panel of the town’s bigwigs, including the likes of Doctor McBrearty (Toby Jones) and landowner John Flynn (Brian F.
O’Byrne). Leading the committee is Ciarán Hinds’ imposing Priest Father Thaddeus, who guides Lib through her two-week assignment.
She is hired to watch — and only to watch — the town’s famous 11-year-old Anna O’Donnell (a sensational Kíla Lord Cassidy in a breakthrough role), who hasn’t had any food for four months since her last birthday and yet still shows no signs of weakness or starvation.Overwhelmed by nosy tourists and insistent journalists, the group simply wants to know whether the girl is a miracle or a fraud. Learning that she’d share shifts with a nun named Sister Michael (Josie Walker), “Why a nun?” inquires the science-minded Lib, understandably rejecting the possibility of divine intervention.
“Welcome to Ireland,” is the loaded response she gets. In another scene that contrasts Lib’s contemporary ways against the devout
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