Helen Mirren stars as a French Jewish grandmother who survived the Holocaust in the family drama WHITE BIRD. Concerned about her grandson Julian (Bryce Gheisar), a boy who is struggling to fit in at his new school after being expelled from his previous one for mistreatment of another student, Grandmere (Mirren) recounts her youthful experiences, a story of her past he has never heard, to teach Julian about the lasting power of kindness. In flashback, the grandmother’s story takes us to WWII France, to her old French village in the woods, where the kindness of a non-Jewish boy saved her life.
Also starring Gillian Anderson, WHITE BIRD is a moving, beautifully-shot and sensitively-told family drama from director Marc Forster, who also directed NEVERLAND. The film is essentially a young adult tale, offering a coming-of-age, historical drama about a grandmother teaching her troubled grandson valuable life lessons about bravery and kindness, by using her own experiences surviving the Holocaust. The screenplay by Mark Bomback is based on a graphic novel by R.J. Palacio, “White Bird: A Wonder Story,” which is a composite of several true stories that are lightly fictionalized. This coming-of-age family drama is part of a series, “Wonder films,” which aims to inspire hope, kindness and humanity.
Rather than the usual historical drama, WHITE BIRD has an unexpected element, which is a hint of Brothers Grimm fairy tale in how this grandmother recounts her wartime experiences to her grandson. Starting with voice-over by Mirren, the film begins its travels to the past by describing the place where she grew up like something out of those Grimm fairy tales: an ancient French town with an old castle at its center and surrounded by deep, dark woods. As a young girl, Sara was afraid to go into the woods, for fear of wolves. The one exception is in the spring, when she and her parents picnic in the woods where the bluebells bloom. Mind you, the tone here is Brothers Grimm, not Disney, with those darker stories’ pattern of a peaceful life falling under darkness and evil but with some light emerging in the end.
The film moves back and forth in time a bit, as storyteller Grandmere Sara weaves her own history into a lesson for her troubled grandson. Young Sara (Ariella Glaser) is a beloved only child, a bit spoiled, the daughter of a doctor father and a math teacher mother. They have a comfortable life. At school, bright Sara also shows a talent for drawing, and is encouraged by her teacher. Sara has a crush on a handsome boy, Vincent (Jem Matthews), but like most of the students, she ignores another boy, who had polio and now walks with a crutch and a leg brace, although some students target him for taunting and bullying.
When the Nazis arrive, nothing much changes at first, even for French Jewish families like Sara’s, because the town is in “unoccupied” France. Then things do start to change, with signs banning Jews going up in shop windows and Jewish people losing their jobs, including Sara’s mother. When Nazis come to the school to round up the Jewish students, Sara manages to escape and hides in the school. She is unsure what to do, until the boy with the crutch, whose name is Julien (Orlando Schwerdt), offers his help. Julien smuggles her out and takes her to his parents’ farmhouse, where his kind-hearted non-Jewish parents hide her.
Sara is hidden in the barn, because Julien’s kindly parents, Vivienne (Gillian Anderson) and Jean Paul (Jo Stone-Fewings), worry that their nosey neighbors might be Nazi sympathizers and might expose her. Hiding her puts them at risk too but Vivienne especially is warm and supportive of the frightened girl. Thoughtful Julien brings Sara food, but also drawing materials and books, and tutors her in school work, so she can keep up. In the barn, they two young people grow close, escaping into a world of imagination by using an old car to pretend to travel, making up stories of adventure.
As expected, Helen Mirren is charmingly winning as the lively, artist grandmother. The bulk of the film is the historical flashback, and there both Ariella Glaser and Orlando Schwerdt excel in their roles as Sara and Julien, with an especially good performance from young Schwerdt. Gillian Anderson is very good as Julien’s warm, supportive mother but it is really the young actors who shine at the center of this drama.
As the tense story of the Jewish girl hidden in the barn unfolds, director Forster skillfully weaves in a message of hope and human empowerment into this sensitively-told wartime drama. The story mirrors many of the true stories of hidden children or families aided by their non-Jewish neighbors. The Nazi threat is always looming, and increased when a group of local boys, including Sara’s crush Vincent, join the Nazis as a town militia. Yet Forster’s storytelling puts an emphasis on the power of human kindness, and bravery in the face of cruelty. The film is, by turns, tense and dramatic or touching and inspiring, portions that Forster skillfully balances. Part coming-of-age tale, part war drama, the film also looks at friendship, budding romantic feelings, and focuses on the power of imagination and art.
This is an emotionally powerful film, that is mostly very well-told, apart from one scene, with wolves in the woods, that leans a bit too heavily into the Grimm’s fairy tale aspect. Overall, WHITE BIRD is a moving, hopeful tale of courage that has the benefit of being a rare survivor’s story film that one is told in a manner appropriate for younger people (preteens, although not the very young) while still teaches some valuable lessons about the power of human kindness in overcoming evil. As the grandmother says near the film’s end, paraphrasing Martin Luther King, “You cannot fight darkness with darkness, only with light.”
WHITE BIRD opens Friday, Oct. 4, at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Cinema.
RATING: 3 out of 4 stars
