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S3E20.5: The Wonder
🕑 Added 2024-06-06 23:25:03 +0000 UTCThis week, we once again enter the November Zone as we watch Sebastián Lelio's The Wonder. A movie about an english nurse tasked with observing a young irish girl who has survived without food for four months, but more than that, a movie about the stories we tell ourselves.
CONTENT WARNING: Discussion of child abuse, of sexual assault, of genocide, of eating disorders and forced feeding
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Comments
Robyn F H Veitch
What if you just slowed the jazz music to 0.5 speed to buy more time? Might sound like a horror movie but still
Bees McBee
If you like Chilean films you should check out La Casa Loba it is fantastic
Ineloquent Reverie
Abi’s hatred of the journalist is obviously understandable but deeply rooted in falsehood: that falsehood being that you can even CALL the British media establishment “journalists”. They straight up do not operate as such unless you’re talking about the good half of The Guardian (Owen Jones) writing mostly opinion pieces and serving as government PR. They do no investigation and no actual reporting, they’re right wing essayists who occasionally repost whatever the government says.
-Kris-
Flannery O'Connor "If I can't eat god then what's the point?!"
Evan J Loewe
I would love an Ireland miniseries. Or if you do “Banshees of Inisherin”, Irish movies with houses burning down.
Meonlights
It speaks for how good the movie is, that we didn't get a "9/11 or Transgender" moment. But I do think this movie is trans as fuck. We have a girl/woman having to suffer in a Christian family because of her brother's sins and him no longer being there. She is wearing some of his old clothes. Her family considers her brother's downfall and death her fault. Her body (weight and later bones) are more important to the public than her life and wellbeing. And she escapes by taking on a new name and being freed to live life as she wants, free from the shadow her brother left on her.
Ross Nolan
I finally decided to listen to this despite the reservations I noted above (being both Irish and somewhat religious, albeit not Catholic, I was wary about both film and review.) I have to say with perhaps one quibble I was impressed by how sensitively and thoughtfully everyone handled this. It's also a rare occasion where I probably align more with November than Abi (though even believer like me laughed at the channeling the spirit of Christopher Hitchens line.) I suppose the one element that surprised me was that Emma Donoghue went entirely unmentioned. I do understand that this is a film studies podcast and I'm normally the first behind Death of the Author but I think some of the context of the story and characters do step from Donoghue being Irish herself (and specifically an Irish emigre to Canada which ties into a whole context of Irish emigrant reflection.) I do want to stress I thought the analysis was very good and well handled not to mention very funny (never go full Cromwell indeed!) but it stood out to me as a curious omission.
