White Bird, 2024.

Directed by Marc Forster.
Starring Ariella Glaser, Orlando Schwerdt, Bryce Gheisar, Gillian Anderson, Helen Mirren, Jo Stone-Fewings, Patsy Ferran, Stuart McQuarrie, Olivia Ross, Ishai Golan, Nadine Leon Gobet, John Bubniak, Jim High, Philip Lenkowsky, James Beaumont, Teagan Stark, Priya Ghotane, Yelisey Kazakevich, Jem Matthews, Sam Talacko, Timon McLean, Selma Kaymakci, Lily Huong Mac, Adam Bakule, Anise Napoleao dos Reis, Jordan Cramond, and Laura Hudečková.

SYNOPSIS:

Struggling to fit in at his new school after being expelled for his treatment of Auggie Pullman, Julian is visited by his grandmother and is transformed by the story of her attempts to escape Nazi-occupied France during World War II.

Thankfully retitled to just White Bird rather than the initial clunky title misleading viewers into believing that this is a spinoff story to 2017’s moving Wonder (starring Owen Wilson, Julia Roberts, and Jacob Tremblay), director Marc Forster (working with screenwriter Mark Bomback and adapting the novel from R.J. Palacio, who also wrote Wonder) tells a bloated but riveting and emotionally impactful Holocaust drama/romance about being othered and the importance of kindness, wrapped up in a modern-day framing device attempting to get the point across that such positivity and niceness is something that has to be learned and instilled into others.

Julian Albans (Bryce Gheisar) has recently been transferred to a different school, yet he struggles with being nice. He dismisses a girl soliciting him to join a social justice program and is generally disinterested in making friends. After returning home, he finds his Jewish grandmother Sara (Helen Mirren) there as his parents are at a soirée. She reveals that he was expelled from the previous school and implies that he needs to change his tune. Thus begins a lengthy childhood story dating back to World War II in France, just before its Nazi occupation.

Now played by Ariella Glaser, Sara is a young girl without much to worry about, admitting that she lived and mostly spoiled life until the Nazi invasion. This also means that she never made much of an effort to stand up to her friends for bullying Julien Beaumier (Orlando Schwerdt), a young boy with polio walking on crutches. While the other boys give her cruel, backhanded remarks that her sketches are “good for a Jew,” he is nothing but polite and nice, carrying himself with dignity surrounded by misinformed and nasty rumors and insults. Once Nazi Germany begins to invade, Sara is tragically separated from her parents (forced to flee friends) and a schoolteacher desperately attempting to keep her safe, eventually winding up taken in by Julien and his parents following a suspenseful cat and mouse in some wintry woods. They hide her in a sizable barn, committed to nurturing her with whatever she needs.

It’s also here where these two teens, othered by society for different reasons, start bonding while tapping into the power of a limitless imagination as freedom. Although the CGI and special effects are rough, it is admirable that the filmmakers try to bring that fantasy to life, such as when Sara and Julien imagine exploring Paris and New York. Julien continues to express impressed feelings toward Sara’s art while her misconceptions of his disability gradually disappear until she only sees him for his bravery and generosity. Seeing how that instills more confidence in Julien is also sweet and moving.

There is also an unexpected darkness to White Bird. Granted, perhaps that should be expected considering the film is grappling with the Holocaust, but for a somewhat family-friendly story preaching kindness, this narrative does not hold back on the danger and disturbing actions of the Nazis. As a result, parts of the film are heartwrenching, reaching an unflinchingly bleak depiction of reality.

As Julian listens to this longwinded story that takes all day for Sara (the occasional interlude of them conversing is generally further shrouded in evening darkness), one is somewhat surprised he hasn’t cut off his grandmother and asked if he can go play video games yet. That’s not a knock on the narrative, but more general surprise that the kid has lasted this long hanging on every word in suspense. It’s less of a spoiler and more common sense that Julian chooses kindness by following this story of treating others with acceptance and respect, but since there is so little happening between him and grandmother Sara, it doesn’t feel fully earned. With that said, the message and intent are enough to make up for that. It also helps to have that call to action be delivered by a legend such as Helen Mirren.

Even the more overcranked melodramatic beats between young Sara and Julien work since they are grounded in character and become focal points of conversation. There isn’t a sense that White Bird is dumbing anything down for its audience or trying to protect them from harsh realities, which is also a bold move for something that also feels targeted at young children who are old and mature enough to engage with harrowing Holocaust material. The film is as long-winded as the storytime, but a cumulative emotional punch and necessary message override some of its flaws.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com

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After 40 years as a band, the bold and brash punk quartet NOFX is calling it quits, but not in a dramatic, explosive way. Instead, they’re signing off this weekend after three final sets at Berth 46 in San Pedro that will wrap up a massive globetrotting tour in which they play 40 songs each night and never the same set twice. It’s the culmination of four decades together as one of the biggest punk bands on the planet, and roughly 10 years of the kind of slow-building resentment that’s usually reserved for close family members and old married couples.

“When you were in a punk band in ’83 all the way through ’88 or so, there was no hope of ever making a living, because no punk band had ever done it,” lead vocalist and bassist “Fat Mike” Burkett says in his backstage trailer at Chicago’s Riot Fest, surrounded by a documentary crew following the final tour and holding a quarter-consumed bottle of Tito’s vodka. “We just did it because we loved it. There was no future. I went to college and real estate school, but I always just wanted to play music with my best friends. It was about saying things you just want to say and not caring what other people think.”

But after spending the bulk of the 1980s fruitlessly bouncing around the SoCal punk rock scene, in the ’90s NOFX — Burkett, guitarists Eric Melvin and Aaron “El Hefe” Abeyta and drummer Erik “Smelly” Sandin — soared to unimagined career heights.

NOFX’s achievements and impact on punk rock at both a local and a global level can’t be overstated. Throughout the ‘90s and 2000s (including 1994’s seminal album “Punk in Drublic”), they became one of the most revered and influential bands in the genre due largely to their unique combination of inappropriate humor, unremorseful attitude, catchy tunes and surprisingly intelligent lyrics. Not only did they define the sound of West Coast punk rock alongside their SoCal contemporaries like Social Distortion, Bad Religion and Descendents but they also opened up opportunities for the next generation of (more radio-friendly) punk rock to reach massive mainstream appeal through bands like Green Day and the Offspring.

Following a decade of success after success as the face, primary songwriter and de facto leader of one of the most prominent bands and record labels in punk rock, Burkett turned his attention to a new cause: ruining the reelection campaign of President George W. Bush. Leading up to the election, Burkett used his platform with the band as well as his Bay Area-based record label, Fat Wreck Chords, to launch Rock Against Bush, a political movement aimed at getting punk fans to vote against the incumbent president. It featured a tour, compilation CDs, merchandise (including the iconic “Not My President” shirts) and tangentially NOFX’s 2003 album, “The War on Errorism.”

“I gave it a year and a half of my life, and I feel I did my civil service,” Burkett says. “I traveled around the country, did radio shows at 6 a.m., did a whole Warped Tour and probably signed up a couple hundred thousand kids. Me and half the staff at Fat Wreck Chords f—ing gave it our all and worked really hard. It was f—ing heartbreaking. That’s why I’m not gonna let it ruin my life if Trump wins. It would be horrible and democracy may be killed, but you can’t let it ruin your life. You still have to be happy and joyful. Help in your community, and do what you can to still make the world a better place even if we’re f—ed.”

People who know Burkett both inside and outside of the band believe the 2004 election was the first time he’d earnestly set out to do something and failed, and he took it extremely hard. To cope with that loss, Burkett — who says he’d never touched cocaine until 1998 — turned harder into drugs and alcohol at a time when some of his bandmates (all of whom were in their late 30s in 2004) were looking to move away from the partying lifestyle.

Nevertheless, NOFX continued on relatively unimpeded for a decade or so, until the band says Burkett’s drug use began to slowly affect his decision-making, recording and live performances. Since then, the rift between the frontman and the others (particularly Melvin) has deepened to the point where the trio has held multiple interventions for Burkett — most recently in 2020, when he went to rehab for a month after vomiting and defecating blood at the vacation home of friend Matt Sanders, singer of Avenged Sevenfold.

“I went to rehab for a month, got out and was sober for pretty much 10 months — but not completely sober,” Burkett says.. “We had a couple rehearsals where I did some lines of coke and had some drinks beforehand, and toward the seventh or eighth month, I was partying again. They all were saying, ‘You’re so much better now. You’re such a nicer person. You’re so much happier.’ And I was thinking, ‘This is hysterical. I’m doing the exact thing I’ve always done.’ When they’d ask me, ‘How’s your sobriety going?’ I would say, ‘Great!’ because if you look up the word ‘sobriety’ in the dictionary, it’s not ‘not drinking,’ it’s that you’re under control of your life.”

Fat Mike and Eric Melvin of NOFX performing at Riot Fest 2024 in Chicago.

(Craig Cummins)

Burkett doesn’t see his drug use as a problem and believes that he’s as healthy as he’s ever been thanks to moderation and exercise (he’s particularly fond of riding his bicycle, which he says he does 20 to 30 miles per day). In fact, the NOFX ringleader says he “only uses drugs when [he’s] working” and believes that retiring from the band — and the preshow ritual of cocaine and vodka that he says he uses to balance his nerves and energize himself — will be good for his health.

To Burkett, the primary issue causing the familial drama within NOFX after all these years is a perceived lack of gratitude and respect he receives from his bandmates even when he feels as though he’s the one steering the ship.

It’s a situation where who’s “wrong” and who’s “right” likely doesn’t matter, as a resolution is unlikely to be found while they’re all stuck in a band together. Burkett and Melvin will always have their own versions of what’s transpired in recent years, with the other two members and the complicated truth all likely somewhere in the middle. But even amid their ongoing differences, Burkett admits it’s not as simple as just wanting to be thanked for being the primary songwriter or booking new opportunities. Instead, it’s a sense of boredom with playing the same shows and same material since he was a teenager. It’s not that the 57-year-old thinks he’s done writing songs or performing; he just wants new avenues in which to do them.

“I liken it to being a playwright who wrote a great play 40 years ago,“ says Burkett, who actually did write a musical called “Home Sweet Home” back in 2014. “I’m the playwright and the actor, and although the play is good and I’m a good actor, I’ve been acting in this f—ing play for 40 years. It’s been an absolute joy playing in a band with my best friends for 40 years, because all the dudes in my band are friends. They’re swell. They’re good dudes, but we’re not close like we used to be. Everyone’s got families and the things they’re doing now, so when we get together, it’s very professional.”

“We were just treading water, and we were doing fine, but it was nothing like this,” Burkett said. “We called it off at the right time, and when people tell me, ‘You’ll be back in five years…’ they can go f— themselves.”

(Jesse Fisher)

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While some may look at the thousands of screaming fans showing up to each night of the farewell tour as proof that NOFX should continue — an idea that Melvin, Sandin and Abeyta are all open to — it also seems like the right time to call it quits before the members (again, particularly Melvin and Burkett, who haven’t spoken to each other in quite some time outside of band necessities) damage their relationship any further. Maybe they could’ve pushed on for another decade, but perhaps it’s better to go out with a bang and allow everyone to move on to the next stage of their lives before they melt down and fight each other onstage. After all, the reunion offers will most certainly be there if and when they’re ready.

As for the band returning in the near future, nothing is certain, but Burkett seems dedicated to keeping his word. Despite cracking jokes — at the expense of metal band Slayer — about a potential reunion at their penultimate tour stop at Riot Fest, he maintains that this is it for NOFX because “it’s so wonderful to have a beginning and an end.”

“I’ve never had my heart filled like it’s been on this tour — and our fan base is just incredible — but we had to stop,” Burkett says. “We were just treading water, and we were doing fine, but it was nothing like this. We called it off at the right time, and when people tell me, ‘You’ll be back in five years…’ they can go f— themselves. They don’t know me. People trust that I’m being honest in my life and in my lyrics, so how could I lie to our entire fan base and to everyone by telling them this is the last tour if it’s not? How could anyone do that? I can’t do it.”