Wonderstruck (2017)

WONDERSTRUCK  (2017)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Todd Haynes
    Millicent Simmonds, Oakes Fegley, Julianne Moore,
    Michelle Williams, James Urbaniak, Tom Noonan
Two interconnected period pieces, both revolving around an 11-year-old kid who's deaf. In 1927, a girl named Rose slips away from her home in New Jersey and catches the ferry to New York to look for her mother. That episode is mostly silent and in black and white. Fifty years later, a boy named Ben escapes from a hospital in Minnesota and catches a bus to New York to look for his dad. There's talking in that one, and it's in color. Both kids end up at the Museum of Natural History, and eventually a book store, where their lives intersect. The script is by Brian Selznick, who wrote "Hugo", and has a real knack for juvenile adventures that could appeal to grownups as much as to kids. And he definitely has a thing for books, old movies and in this story specifically, museums. Oakes Fegley, as Ben, looks enough like Michelle Williams, playing his mother, for their relationship to be believable. But the real discovery is deaf actress Millicent Simmonds as Rose. She's a natural, an actress who appears to take everything in without changing her expression much at all. You can imagine her showing up at an open audition and getting the part, not because she's the cutest girl in the room, but because she's the most interesting. Julianne Moore looks right at home in a film within the film, as the star of a silent movie, and Carter Burwell's score weaves in and out on the soundtrack, along with period tunes from the two time frames. Don't be surprised if you walk out of this with David Bowie's "Space Oddity" stuck in your head.