Wonder

The real engineering in Stephen Chbosky’s film sits at the makeup table. Arjen Tuiten’s design is a skull cap with prosthetic ears, a facial prosthetic covering Jacob Tremblay’s face entirely, and a wig tying the two together. Makeup on that scale normally runs three hours; Tuiten got it to ninety minutes and then to an hour and fifteen. The reason was legal, not aesthetic: child labour rules capped Tremblay’s day, and time saved in the chair was time on set. To keep a nine year old still that long, they played a film exactly ninety minutes long during every application. The design was softened from the novel on purpose. The Auggie described in the book is far more severe, and Tuiten pulled the makeup back to a point Tremblay could still act through. It brought Tuiten his first Academy Award nomination, for makeup at the 90th ceremony. Filming took place in New York and British Columbia. The result shifts the weight of these one hundred and thirteen minutes off the face and onto the room: you read the reaction in how other people look at him. A good fit if you accept a deliberately lightened Auggie and will take the reaction from the surrounding faces. Not for you if you have read the novel and want the severity it describes.