White Bird movie review: Kindness takes a much deeper, historical meaning in this Helen Mirren film

Talking purposefully in French, thus establishing her Parisienne roots, and mentioning offhandedly her next day’s Met retrospect, thus establishing her effortless artistic accomplishments, Sara gets down to reining in Julian. Appalled at his statement that he has decided to try being “normal” – and hence “to neither be good nor bad” – Sara tells him a story, which is the length of the film, on how acts of goodness change lives.

It is a Holocaust story, where a young, pre-teen Jew girl called Sara (played by Glaser) is helped by a classmate called Julian (Schwerdt) who is afflicted by polio, is the butt of jokes and so cruelly treated that the other children don’t even know his real name. After Sara has a narrow escape from a raiding German party at school, Julian hides her in their family barn. Very quickly and very bravely, Julian and his parents, including mother Vivienne (Anderson), have made the barn a home for Sara.

Friendships among children are a hard nut to crack. You either get them or you can seem contrived, especially if there is a boy and a girl involved. Despite Forster creating a real mood out of that barn, including imaginary rides that Julian and Sara take in a broken-down car stashed in the barn, with functioning headlights to add to the aura, the interactions between the two are boring, without any chemistry or tension, and much too repetitive. It’s a stretch that goes on for so long that even Sara as the grandmother narrator repeats several times, “It was winter”, “It was spring”, “It was winter again” etc etc.

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At other times, we get glimpses of German soldiers doing their Nazi things, which here is mostly checking people and herding them away to unknown destinations.

Most of the film carries on in this unimaginative mode to its inevitable – and, as Sara is alive, not all gloomy – destination.

Julian Albans perhaps didn’t count on getting such a profound lesson when he embarked on schoolboy cruelty. However, there is no doubt about the impression left – and not just on him – when Sara, now a world away from that barn, tells him, “Acts of kindness are never forgotten, much like love.”

And yet, as events in the Middle East show, how quickly these can be.

White Bird movie director: Marc Forster
White Bird movie cast: Helen Mirren, Gillian Anderson, Ariella Glaser, Orlando Schwerdt, Bryce Gheisar
White Bird movie star rating: 2.5 stars