Wander to Wonder: Manifestations of Grief
“Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones:
Had I your tongues and eyes, I’d use them so
That heaven’s vault should crack. She’s gone forever!
I know when one is dead, and when one lives;
She’s dead as earth.”
In one of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedies, the titular Lear howls to the skies out of anguish over his daughter’s unfair demise. Loss is a sensation difficult to define and easily feared. More often than not when we lose something (or someone), it is a change beyond our expectations. “I know when one is dead, and when one lives”—the difference between presence and absence is incredibly stark, but then we are forced to look this disparity right in the eyes, and…well, what should we do then, really?
Nina Gantz’s Wander to Wonder (2023) takes on the challenge of presenting the dilemma that succeeds a loss. In this stop-motion animated short, Mary, Billybud, and Fumbleton star in a children’s television program, also called Wander to Wonder. Following the death of the show’s host and creator, the sorrowful trio remain in their home, surviving on scraps and struggling to live together in bleak conditions, but are still trying to keep the program alive by recording new episodes on their own.
Out of the three, Mary pays the most attention to these efforts. Her mindset might parallel the motivations of Kyle Mooney’s character James in Dave McCary’s Brigsby Bear (2017). Not unlike the Wander to Wonder group, a lot of James’ life also revolves around a children’s entertainment show. Except in his story, James is the audience, and when the show he loves very much suddenly ends, he sets out to make a movie to give the story some proper closure. Back to Mary, it seems like her experience of dealing with grief is to respond to an unexpected event by trying to grasp control of the things that she can. It’s almost like saying, “I don’t know what happens next, but at least I can do this.”
All the while Mary struggles to keep it together, Fumbleton quotes one of Shakespeare’s works: the king's grief-stricken speech in King Lear. The desperation that is depicted truly manifests in the state of living of these characters as they cope with loss. We witness their disheveled faces and the muted colors of what’s left of their home. We also catch the sound of countless flies swarming around and the moments of silence in between, accompanied by Terence Dunn’s wistful music. Through this combination of visual and auditory detail, feelings of isolation were not only seen but heard.
I have to admire how well the medium of stop-motion animation delivered this story. As an admirer of stop motion, I love that expressions and movements are captured in a lifelike manner and yet maintain a sort of distance—like aspects of a fantastical world. However in truth, especially in this short film, these characters are fully merged within our reality and exposed to human experiences, the bad and the good.
Another Shakespearean monologue that Fumbleton quotes is Henry V’s Once More unto the Breach, Dear Friends speech:
“In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;”
Delivered by King Henry V as a call to arms, it was meant to raise the morale of his troops. To the Wander to Wonder trio, this recitation could act as a reminder that there is still the rest of the world right outside of their home, free for them to wander.
Even with a short runtime, Wander to Wonder uncovers what layers of grief could look like. The trio’s desolate situation might reflect what’s been living inside each of them as well: despondency and coldness. Despite that, it is also a display of humanity and community, showing that there is still room for hope beyond loss.