These stories wholly depend on one another to reach the sappy endgame, and yet there’s no lasting impression from either: Selznick pursues these plots with such lifeless structural adherence so what little excitement there is to be found in the maturation of the characters, or the experiencing of new things through fresh eyes is punctuated by mundane, conventional beats. What these sovereign quests are alluding to is no mystery (the climax can be spotted a mile off) and neither have independent stakes: they’re simply bifurcated toward a forced resolution, with few credible obstacles or convincing struggle.
Adapted into a screenplay from his own juvenile novel, Brian Selznick – who also wrote the similarly twee The Invention of Hugo Cabret novel, which Scorsese’s Hugo was based on – presents this abundance of banality in two stories of youngsters breaking free from their closed-society: one taking place in 1927, the other 1977. It’s been a little over two years since Haynes enchanted audiences with a sensitive portrayal of sapphic love in 1950s Manhattan, so it’s not difficult to speculate why the mawkish, maudlin Wonderstruck has been highly anticipated by countless cinemagoers. In UK cinemas this Friday, acclaimed American director Todd Haynes ( Far from Heaven, Carol) misses his target with unusually high frequency as he takes on The Invention of Hugo Cabret author Brian Selznick’s excessively earnest YA novel Wonderstruck.
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