White Bird

A Jewish girl is protected by a boy with a disability in this lovely, moving WWII drama directed by Marc Forster and co-starring Helen Mirren.

One reason I think World War II stories still carry such power is because they — unfortunately for us all — connect so well with today. Just look at what’s happening in the Middle East right now, and it seems like the importance of stressing kindness over hatred is a lesson that still needs to be learned.

That’s the simple story of “White Bird,” about Sara, a teenage Jewish girl living in France who is protected by an outcast boy with a disability. In a swift passage of time, she goes from one of the most popular girls in the school, someone who looks down upon this lad like everyone else, to the lowest of the low, literally chased as vermin by the Nazis and their French collaborators.

It stars Helen Mirren, though she’s only really around in the beginning and the end (plus narrating), playing modern-day Sara in her 90s, now a celebrated painter receiving a major retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. In addition to this event, she has come to town to tell her story to her grandson, Julien (Bryce Gheisar), who is going through a tough time as a new student at Yates Academy, an elite preparatory school.

It’s clear she feels the youngster needs to learn about the importance of kindness, and the best way to do that is by relating her tale of cruelty, and how she was saved by its opposite.

As the story opens it’s fall 1942, and while France is occupied by Germany much is still the same in Sara’s bucolic countryside village. She lives a privileged life as the daughter of a surgeon father and mathematics professor mother (Ishai Golan and Olivia Ross, respectively), lives in a handsome house and, as a typical 15-year-old girl, takes great delight in wearing fine clothes and gossiping about boys.

In particular she is smitten with Vincent (Jem Matthews), one of those boys who is very handsome and very much aware of it, even as he subtly acts the bully. His chief target is Julien (Orlando Schwerdt), who has a lame leg resulting from polio that he drags around with a brace and crutch. In addition he is poor, and both he and his family work menial jobs, so Vincent and the others taunt him about smelling bad.

One of Julien’s odd jobs is working as projectionist at the local cinema, where from the perched booth he likes to watch Sara watching the movies, with Charlie Chaplin as her favorite. He also looks the other way as the owner, Georges (Vladimír Javorský), quietly runs a Resistance cell in the theater bowels.

Sara as a youngster is played by Ariella Glaser, who is just magnificent. She’s one of those child actors blessed with an open face that instantly projects every emotion playing inside her character. She does not portray Sara as an angel but a normal kid who can be self-involved and dismissive of others.

For example, until Julien rescued her when the Germans raided the school of all the Jewish children, she had not even known his real name, calling him by the insulting nickname the other students reserved for him: Crab, after his shambling walk.

He hides her in the ramshackle barn at his family farm, where she ends up living for over a year. Julien’s parents (Gillian Anderson and Jo Stone-Fewings) instantly accept the role of protectors, even though it would mean a terrible fate for their family should Sara be discovered.

Unsurprisingly, Vincent joins the Nazi youth brigade and helps in terrorizing the local populace. He winds up as the main villain of the piece.

Julien visits her in the loft of the barn every night, at first under the semblance of keeping her up with schoolwork, but after a time it’s clear a friendship — and perhaps something more — is growing there.

The title is based on the bird Sara can only peer at flying free through the holes in the barn’s roof, a simple but effective metaphor for her plight. The screenplay by Mark Bomback is adapted from the graphic novel by R. J. Palacio.

I loved the storytelling device of the broken-down truck in the barn, which Sara and Julien climb into to go through drives through Paris or New York using just their imaginations. Later, something occurs that recalls “Cinema Paradiso,” and that’s high praise.

Director Marc Forster is a seasoned hand at these sorts of stories, period pieces imbued with a sense of tragedy and humanity: “Finding Neverland,” “Monster’s Ball,” “The Kite Runner.” He knows how to pluck the right tone, a sort of elegiac feeling of remembrance and regret, tempered with a note of hopefulness.

The production values are spectacular, with just lovely photography by Matthias Koenigswieser and a beautifully sad musical score by Thomas Newman, who with 15 Oscar nominations without a win (“Finding Nemo,” “1917”), seems about due. Sets and costumes are similarly top-notch.

The primary dynamic is between Sara and Julien, and while it’s one of love and friendship it is not without its bumps and bruises. They do not really trade places in the power structure — Julien is still tormented by Vincent and his huns — but she begins to appreciate the sense of powerlessness that has ruled his life. One can turn the other cheek, but only for so long.

I wish the movie had given a little more time to the framing story so it could better connect with the main part. We’re told that modern Julien was expelled from his last school for being cruel to another boy, but without any context we’re left to wonder what it was, or whether he’s really learned from his grandmother’s lesson.

Still, “White Bird” is a film of immense emotionality and humanism. When it feels like so many people are riven with hatred and blindness, here’s a needed reminder that true strength lies within, even among the meekest.