Wonderstruck

Wonderstruck (2017) is a drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Todd Haynes and starring Oakes Fegley, Millicent Simmonds, and Julianne Moore. Running 116 minutes, it tells two stories set fifty years apart that slowly converge.

In 1977, a boy named Ben loses his mother and sets out across New York looking for a father he's never met. In 1927, a deaf girl named Rose runs away from home, chasing a silent-film actress she's obsessed with from newspaper clippings. Their separate journeys unfold in entirely different visual styles — Haynes shoots the 1920s storyline in the mode of a black-and-white silent film, while the 1970s scenes blaze with warm color. The contrast isn't decorative. It's the whole argument.

The film is particularly attentive to characters who experience the world without sound — Millicent Simmonds, who is deaf in real life, brings an authenticity that lifts the film well above a standard family drama. Based on the illustrated novel by Brian Selznick, who also wrote the screenplay. Stream Wonderstruck (2017) online on iFILM.