‘Wonder Woman’:
Gal Gadot gives new complexity to a hero encountering the horrors of warfare
New complexity for a hero facing the horrors of warfare.
“Wonder Woman” is a different kind of action movie, and it’s all the better for it. It has humor, and it’s grounded in history. It’s the story of a woman’s coming of age, and it’s a critique not only of a world run by men, but also of other action movies that glorify war.
It’s not a great film — there are a couple of dull stretches — but it’s a welcome alternative to the usual noisy, nasty male-oriented action movies that have dominated the summer season for the past 20 years.
Gal Gadot has the title role, and she has appeared in enough films that her screen magnetism comes as no surprise — but the
impact of that magnetism is a surprise. Like a screen star from the 1930s, her beauty in “Wonder Woman” is an event in itself, not just pleasing but interesting. So when she puts on glasses, that’s interesting. When she changes into the fashions of 1918, that’s also interesting. Hat or no hat? That’s interesting, too.
This is not critical foaming at the mouth — when you see this film you will get it, women and men — because we’re not talking about the libido here. We’re talking about a face that holds the audience in a happy state of suspension and awe, so that when a close-up comes, everybody stops breathing and looks. This doesn’t happen often — in color films it barely happens at all — but director Patty Jenkins knows what she has in Gadot and uses closeups with the deftness of a George Cukor or some other great golden-age director.
Wonder Woman begins life on an island paradise, hidden by Zeus from Ares, the god of War. The Amazons are an entirely female race of warriors, preparing for a combat that might never take place. Diana (Gadot) has a special fate in all this, but she doesn’t know it yet, and then one day an American soldier crashes his biplane near the Amazon island. It’s World War I, and he is being pursued by Germans. Suddenly, the outside world has penetrated.
The soldier, Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), has to make it back to the Allied lines, and she spontaneously decides to accompany him. She has a sword and a shield and has the naive idea that if she can locate and kill Ares, the god of war, she will put an end to the fighting. This begins what is probably the most enjoyable part of the movie. Because Diana knows nothing about men and about modern civilization, it’s fun to watch her make discoveries.
In the London of 1918, she reacts to the noise and the cars. She finds out about ice cream and revolving doors and likes both. She also comes to realize that a woman’s opinion is perhaps not quite so valued as it was back home. And she sees a world that is full of destruction and misery on such a scale as to be beyond imagining.
This is where “Wonder Woman” becomes more than just fun and war games. This film easily could have been another tiresome exercise that defines feminism as any time a woman gets to be as violent as the most horrible man. Instead, it goes in the opposite direction. It presents Diana as the Female Principle representing the arts of life and, ultimately, love, in collision with a world that men have been collectively trying to destroy for at least the past 100 years.
Along this line, “Wonder Woman” achieves touching and powerful moments that are unusual for a movie of this kind. In particular, there’s a scene in which Diana walks through a town that has been gassed and all its inhabitants killed. We get a couple of shots of Gadot as seen from behind, a witness to cruelty, with the rest of the frame filled with orange smoke. Consider also that it’s an Israeli actress of Eastern European descent at the center of that frame, standing across a gulf of time that would include even greater horrors.
Fortunately, not all men are bad. No, there are some good ones, such as Steve Trevor, who has an affecting quality here of always trying to catch up. Sometimes he has to head off the consequences of Diana’s naivete, and sometimes he has to rise to the demands of her insight. But he can barely tell the difference. David Thewlis finds unexpected nuance in the role of a gentle parliamentarian. And on the other side of the lines, Danny Huston adds to his rogues’ gallery as a German general looking for military victory through nerve gas.
At times, “Wonder Woman” descends to the level of a comic-book movie, with a scene or two reminiscent of “Iron Man,” but such moments are comparatively brief. What lingers beyond that is the feeling of hope that the movie brings, that it someday might be possible for female rationality to defeat male brutality. When they made the movie, they probably thought that sort of thing was right around the corner.
In any case — someday.