As America limps towards its presidential election next month, both the traditional media outlets and social media are filled with angry rants about immigrants eating pets, causing murderous mayhem and stealing jobs away from everyday, hardworking Americans. None of that is true, by the way, but this vilification of others is a cancer, plain and simple, and needs to be eradicated quickly lest the country descend into the same abyss that saw Nazi Germany and its allies throw the world into war in 1939.

British prime minister Winston Churchill is often quoted as saying, “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Though he probably wasn’t the first person to say that, he was absolutely correct, and we’re seeing it today when Holocaust denial is at an all-time high, and not just in the US. A survey done last year by The Economist/YouGov found that one-fifth of US citizens between the ages of 18 and 29 believe that the Holocaust is a myth. I’d like to say that I’m shocked but when the presidents of three prestigious American universities refused to say that calling for the genocide of Jews is considered harassment and bullying, it’s obvious that the education system there is broken.

WHITE BIRD: A WONDER STORY, a spin-off sequel to WONDER from 2017, is now rolling out to cinemas around the world and it brings with it an easy-to-digest, introduction to Holocaust education, ostensibly targeted to young adults but evidently just as necessary for Gen Zers and Millennials.

After the events of WONDER, rich kid and bully Julian Albans (played again by Bryce Gheisar) is now enrolled at a new prep school in New York City. With the memory of his bad behaviour towards his former classmate still fresh in his mind, he’s decided to lay low for the time being while he finds his way. However, when he witnesses a classmate bullying another student he realizes that sitting on the sidelines is not going to be easy. When he gets home, his grandmère (Helen Mirren, SHAZAM! FURY OF THE GODS), a famous artist who is in town for a retrospective mounted in her honour, is there waiting for him. She’s heard about what happened to Julian and she feels the time is right to finally tell him about her childhood in occupied France when she was forced to hide from the Nazis only because she was Jewish.

I’m really of two minds with this film. As a Jew whose own family was murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators in 1942, I have a problem with Hallmark-ish treatments of such an important subject. The emotional part of me says that audiences need to have the crap scared out of them if they’re ever going to learn that “othering” cannot be tolerated. The rational part of me, however, says that if it’s not presented in a family-friendly format, then the people who need to watch and learn won’t. In this respect, I’ll give the film a pass. Certainly, unlike another YA-targeted Holocaust film of late, THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PAJAMAS, this story gets the history right. (There is absolutely no way anyone could have been able to hold a conversation, much less multiple conversations, with anyone on the other side of a concentration camp fence.)

What irks me about WHITE BIRD, though, is that it presents the Holocaust like a Greatest Hits album. It’s got the young, smart and talented Sara Blum (Ariella Glaser, RADIOACTIVE), whose life is turned upside down in an instant. There’s the good-hearted classmate, Julien Beaumier (Orlando Schwerdt), who knows all-too-well about being bullied. There’s his equally kind mother, Vivienne (Gillian Anderson, TV’s THE CROWN and THE X-FILES) who puts her own life at serious risk. Then there’s the supporting cast of stock characters: the priest and teacher who stand up to the Nazis, the resistance fighters (it’s no surprise what happens to them), the class bully who finds his mission in life in the Nazi-supported paramilitary (it’s no surprise what happens to him either), the bully’s henchman who develops a conscience, the Nazi-collaborator neighbours and the barking German shepherds. With so much stereotyping going on, the story practically writes itself.

Thankfully, director and co-writer Marc Forster (A MAN CALLED OTTO) brings out good performances from his two young leads in the wartime narrative even if story goes exactly where you think it’s going to go as soon as the first sign written in traditional German script appears in a shop window telling customers that Jews are no longer allowed inside. But that’s me, someone who learned about the unfiltered evil and horrors of the Holocaust from a young age. For so many young people today, WHITE BIRD: A WONDER STORY will be a safe introduction to the subject of tolerance and standing up to the bullies of the world… as long as the lessons don’t just stop there.

WHITE BIRD: A WONDER STORY opens in Hong Kong next Thursday (October 24th).

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