While I wasn’t a huge fan of director Terrence Malick’s 2011 Best Picture Oscar nominee, “The Tree of Life”, the trailer made for Malick’s latest film, “To the Wonder”, is fantastic. In fact, it’s one of the best trailers I’ve seen in a long time and it gave me hope that “To the Wonder” would be a more grounded and relatable film than the somewhat disjointed “Life”.
I’ll begin with the obvious: there’s no mistaking that “To the Wonder” is a Malick creation. It has his distinct look, feel and tone. The movie is visually beautiful and the hand-held camera style works. There are wonderful shots of wheat fields, characters walking on the beach and even buffalo (thankfully no dinosaurs this time). And sometimes these images even have something to do with the story!
And that’s the biggest problem with “To the Wonder”. This tale of an American in France on business named Neil (Ben Affleck) who falls for a French woman named Marina (Olga Kurylenko – also in “Oblivion”) and brings her and her daughter back to live with him in a small, suffering town in Oklahoma lacks any of the dramatic tension that Malick provided with his family in “Tree of Life”. One minute Neil and Marina are madly in love and the next they want to
kill each other. And we never learn why. During one of their separations (there are many) Rachel McAdams pops-in for about 15 minutes
as Neil’s new love interest and then she completely disappears. Then we get
more scenes of Neil and Marina’s ups and downs.
At the same time there is a parallel story involving the town’s parish priest, played by Javier Bardem. For me these are the strongest sections of the film. We get to see and hear his sadness, loneliness and frustration with trying to stay strong in God, while dealing with the day-to-day struggle to keep a true spiritual presence in his life. Unlike the other actors, Bardem is allowed to give a complete performance. As for Affleck, Kurylenko and McAdams – it’s hard to qualify walking, dancing, holding each other, throwing things and not looking at each other while in the same shot – mostly in silence – as performances.
Don’t get me wrong, I can appreciate Malick’s directing and editing style. And the lack of dialogue is made-up by a beautiful score. In fact, while most people will complain that the characters in “To the Wonder” don’t talk enough – either to each other or though narration – I wish there was even less. In particular Bardem’s priest hits us over the head with his (Malick’s?) thoughts on love, life and God in one long speech at the end of the film. It’s as if Malick wasn’t confident that we could get it on our own.
“To the Wonder” is one of those films where you watch things unfold, but none of what’s happening affects you either positively or negatively. No doubt Malick fans will love it, but many others will be left to wonder…what did I just watch? I kind of felt the same way about “The Tree of Life”, but that film, at its core (not the Earth’s core), had a stronger script and more effective performances. If you like watching movies to be entertained, this is tough to recommend. If you like to be challenged by a film and don’t mind not getting all the answers, give it a try.
On The Official LCJ Report Card, “To the Wonder” gets a C.
This was the final movie that my friend and famed critic Roger Ebert reviewed before passing away. His review, a wonderful read, not only shows the appreciation Roger had for Malick’s work, including “To the Wonder” (which he gave three and a half stars), but his overall thoughts on storytelling through film. While not everyone agreed with his opinions, Roger always had something fascinating to say in his reviews and essays, that made us think about the cinema and life in ways we never had before. It’s no “Wonder” why he’ll always be considered the best there ever was.