Wonderstruck

I have not consumed any of the printed works by writer and illustrator Brian Selznick, so I’m somewhat stymied to explain why two of the greatest filmmakers of my lifetime have made bad movies from his books. Martin Scorsese’s pandering 2011 cinephile dog whistle Hugo adapted Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret, and while it garnered awards nominations and dutiful critical acclaim, a pervasive feeling of forced magic permeated that cluttered and overbearing film. Now Todd Haynes, the man behind Safe, Far from Heaven and I’m Not There, has turned Selznick’s 2011 illustrated novel Wonderstruck into a minor motion picture. In addition to the persistent pacing and framing issues, Wonderstruck inevitably becomes trapped by a back-and-forth structure that undercuts the momentum at every turn. The structure is so ill-conceived that most of the final half-hour gets devoted to the characters reading handwritten notes that fill in all the plot holes. D.B.