In 2017, a “little” film called Wonder shared R.J. Palacio’s story about finding love and acceptance through the example of a little boy with facial deformities named Auggie. In that story, Auggie’s main tormentor is a young man named Julian (Bryce Gheisar) who finds himself on the outside when the consequences of his actions catch up with him. In a graphic novel called White Bird, Palacio continued Julian’s story in an encounter with his grandmother, who tells him stories of her childhood as a Jewish girl in Nazi-occupied France. Now, audiences everywhere will see the story that director Marc Forster spins with Helen Mirren as Julian’s artist Grandmère with Ariella Glaser as her younger self.
Told as a story to Julian, Mirren’s grandmother shares how young Sara Blum, a young French Jewish girl, finds safety and friendship in the life of her childhood frenemy Julien Beaumier (Orlando Schwerdt). Reading that probably informs the reader about how this story will play out, but Forster’s artful direction keeps the mystique going throughout. The director of Finding Neverland, Quantum of Solace, and A Man Called Otto brings a certain gravitas to the way a film about two kids doing the best they can in the middle of a worldwide tragedy. (Hey, anything with Mirren in it has a certain amount of gravitas anyway, right?)
You can probably guess how some of this story is going to go. It’s just too embedded in the slaughter of people by the Nazis during World War II. But the way that Palacio to Forster to Mirren connects, it’s a warning from the past about the present. It’s bearing witness to the tragedies of the Holocaust; it’s a witness to the past as it’s been, and a warning about the future that could be. I know, I know, no one wants to get political at the movies, right? We have enough debates and campaign ads to go around. But this story needs telling, and not just in terms of looking at the big bad Nazi machine.
White Bird says that when we stand silently while others suffer, we’re guilty of what happens to them. You see someone picked on, says Mirren’s grandmother, and you’re guilty of what happens to them, Julian. Ouch! But it’s deeper than that right? Because there are people who wring their hands at deep injustice but don’t vote, spend their money, speak, or act differently. They think it will never be their problem, that only those other people suffer.
Watching White Bird reminded me of this fantastic poem from Reverend Martin Niemöller:
“First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.”
Julian’s grandmother is providing a hard life lesson that everyone’s grandmother should teach: we’re only as strong as the people we stand for. White Bird says that we should stand up… for everyone.
