Wonderstruck
Todd Haynes’s all-ages enchantment, adapted from a young-adult novel by Hugo author Brian Selznick, follows the parallel, ultimately converging journeys of two children, one set in 1927 and the other 1977.
In 1977, following the death of his single mother, Ben (Oakes Fegley) loses his hearing in a freak accident and makes his way from Minnesota to New York, hoping to learn about the father he has never met. A half-century earlier, another deaf 12-year-old, Rose (Millicent Simmonds), flees her restrictive Hoboken home, captivated by the bustle and romance of the nearby big city. Each of these parallel adventures, unfolding largely without dialogue, is an exuberant love letter to a bygone era of New York.