Marc Forster is back with another page-to-screen adaptation, with White Bird, a tangential spin-off of the 2017 movie Wonder. Based on the graphic novel of the same name by R.J. Palacio, the movie premiered at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival on July 30. The movie’s release was shifted to the last quarter of the year by Lionsgate, its producer and distributor.
White Bird – What We Know So Far
White Bird has been shifted from one release date to the other, with its first initial release date being 16th September 2022. However, the date was pushed to October, and then it was finally taken off the schedule of upcoming releases from Lionsgate. Finally, in 2023, the movie was supposed to be released on 18th August 2023 in selected theaters, and then in all theaters on the 25th of August. However, due to the SAG-AFTRA strike going on in the United States, the movie’s public release has been pushed to an unspecified date in the last quarter of the year.
The film features a relatively low-key cast, with the two big names being Helen Mirren and Gillian Anderson in supporting roles. Ariella Glaser and Orlando Schwerdt star in the two leading roles : as Sara Blum and Julien Beaumier respectively.
The movie follows a young adult love story, set in the backdrop of Nazi France. The film begins as Grandmere recounts to Julian (from Wonder), a bewitching story of her past where she had fallen in love with a boy who had sheltered her from harm’s way. The story is a very faithful adaptation of the graphic novel to the screen, and Bomback intersperses shots of the film with a lot of archival footage.
Critics are mostly branding the movie as lukewarm, with no breakout performance from the leads, and the older icons, Anderson and Mirren are restrained by their minimal roles. The movie does not have any booming elements that draw too much attention or send waves rippling. Variety reviews the movie as an extremely romanticized version of the Holocaust, instead of being a more honest depiction of the brutalities of the Nazi regime. Reviewers have also critiqued the accents of the actors, who have British accents in spite of being French. Mirren is apparently very disorienting in her accent, as well. Other than that, the film does not have too many glaring flaws, but it does not seem like it is supposed to make huge numbers as of yet.
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