To the Wonder (Terrence Malick)

[Stay Puft]

For about the first two thirds, this was easily another four star film for the year (Carruth's being my first). It just feels perfect. Every shot, every cut (I drink the Malick kool-aid, though, so there you go). And like Carruth's film, I'm in love with those soundscapes (probably the most distinctive element of To the Wonder compared to Malick's previous films): the way dialogue is mixed so loosely, quietly, freely, and the way the sound will focus in on certain details with the same instinctual curiosity as Lubezki's camera (the whirl of the merry-go-round, Neil fumbling with the gear shift when he's arguing with Marina at the drive-thru, lingering on a song at a party and carrying it into another scene). There's a warmth and softness to the film (before the darker aspects of the film appear, obviously, although there's brightness throughout), with all the shots of characters running, frolicking, rolling around on the carpet, the motif of light shining in through windows, shadows on the wall... I wanted to wrap myself in this movie and have a nap. This is some of Lubezki's best work, too. I want to use the word rapturous. I don't want to sound like a blithering Malick fan but fuck it, there's nothing else out there like the current Malick/Lubezki combo and it nourishes my aesthetic soul.

I did think the film had some structural problems, though. It's highly repetitive when Marina returns from Paris, which may be the point (certainly, the trajectory of events echoes her first visit), but I also thought it strange that what should be some of the most dramatically important events in the film are rendered the most oblique, especially the closing segments, which just feel hurried. This film could have used less plot (is that a weird criticism?). I found myself wanting a more focused emotional narrative experience, so I understand some of the colder responses to the film. This isn't The Tree of Life; there isn't enough scope to justify nearly two hours. I couldn't help but feel a shorter runtime would have helped here. As it is, the film just doesn't coalesce for me the way Malick's earlier films do, even though I did like the final voice over from Bardem's character (and the beautiful closing shots).

The more I ruminate on it, though, the more the sadness of the film starts to stir and shake me. I'd have to see it again, especially to get a better read on the ending, but even on a first viewing I do think it's mostly a success in the interplay it creates between the instinctual aesthetic elements (camera, sound, editing) that give the film a sort of primal sensory presence, and a deeper longing, a deeply felt absence, a more complicated human struggle to understand the world around us, and each other, with our given senses and ability to reason (the constant repetition of the "show me how to love you" and "teach me how to find you" voiceovers, which is the real key I find that weaves the Marina/Neil and the priest storylines together).

[Stay Puft]

That sea turtle, though. Seriously. I laughed for five minutes straight. The most lolwut moment of the year right there.

[Watashi]

I honestly don't remember the sea turtle.

[ledfloyd]

That sea turtle, though. Seriously. I laughed for five minutes straight. The most lolwut moment of the year right there.

Right!? I don't get it.

[transmogrifier]

After saying I would skip this, I found myself downloading it anyway. It'll sit there until I am in the mood to watch it. It's going to have to be a perfect combination of circumstances for that mood to eventuate, but I'm gearing up for it.

[wigwam]

Can't imagine watching this on a computer

The sea turtle was great.

[Sxottlan]

During post-screening discussion, we considered how Marina's Ukranian friend in the Oklahoma scenes could be perceived as a figment of her imagination, a way to let out her worst tendencies for a while (as Marina later states, she feels like two people).

That's how I read those scenes as well.

[Sxottlan]

I think I would have really loved this movie if it was just two hours of the lonely Father Quintana wandering around the slums of rural Oklahoma. But the nearly endless shots of people twirling and meandering around with narration about loving love did start to grate on me for the first time in Malick's films. Although I was intrigued by the shots at the end of someone flashing a light in the woman's face when she's seemingly alone.

By the way, I don't know if it was the theater where I saw this, but the sound was really well done in this. Certain things like a spinning globe of glass or oil drilling machinery. All contributed to a nice aural and visual experience.

[wigwam]

I don't think the friend is her imagination, also she's speaking Italian not Ukranian - she seemed like another immigrant whose experience and attitude were contextualizing our protagonists'

[Izzy Black]

I don't think the friend is her imagination, also she's speaking Italian not Ukranian - she seemed like another immigrant whose experience and attitude were contextualizing our protagonists'

I think that's right, but there's also something to be said about the highly subjective nature of the encounter, where the function and appearance of this character serves no other purpose than of realizing Marina's inner-dialogue with herself. This is why it's curious to me that Ed Gonzalez reads the scene so literally, and interprets the film as "cringingly reductive" of immigrant experience, as if that's what the film was setting out to achieve. If the film is to be taken as an account of immigrant experience, it's almost inevitably going to be reductive just as it would be reductive of love and marriage. The film works in fragmented poetic gestures, etching out through a visceral wave of feelings, moods, and sentiments the decay of a marriage and the search for purity. The ideas clearly aren't found in the details. We aren't given those.

It's also striking to me that he thinks Q'Orianka Kilcher's Pochahontas was somehow a better developed character than Marina. He thinks we have a better sense of what Kilcher's character gives up when she's displaced and relocated, but I don't think that's the case, as for Marina, it's clearly her daughter. I don't think Marina's connection to America, or Paris, or Ukraine, is rooted in a strong sense of cultural orientation, an original sense of place or home (as it is for Pochahontas). We get the sense that she was perhaps always displaced. In constant mettle with isolation and loneliness, Marina's Eden, her 'New World,' is Neil and her daughter, the home she perhaps never had. This is clear when she returns to Paris without either Neil or her daughter and it's utterly unbearable for her. Contrary to Gonzalez's suspicions, it's not that she thinks America is a better place, but that Paris is not a home without family. In this way, her character is almost more tragic than Pochahontas because home and happiness for her is not something culturally rooted, or something intimately bound to nature and her environment. She only gets glimpses of this kind of home, this kind of culture, as a visitor, a waif and perpetual immigrant, appreciating the beauty of Oklahoma and Mont St. Michel at a distance as a tourist and guest, but while only in the company of those she loves. This is why she seems so desperate for human attachment, so desperate to love someone so fully and completely, and to be loved the same. This is what really brings out the significance of the ending for her character. Pochahontas finds renewal in birth, sacrificing personal liberty for the connectedness with her own child, while for Marina, the renewal must come from separation, through liberation, but only by coming to terms with the the overwhelming fear of her own autonomy.

[Bosco B Thug]

Who knew, this may be more interesting, even more ambitious than The Tree of Life in my opinion. Malick shows a fearless interest in exploring social pockets here, and the quasi-documentary segments stun, while the spectacle of watching Ben Affleck pretend to be an "everyday professional" inspecting a geographic site is a brilliant mental discombobulation (same goes, but less so, with Javier Bardem at the prison, etc.). The brilliant first quarter may essentially be called "America vs. France!", and its depiction of the gap, often via the perception of the little girl, is vivid through really inspired cinematography.

I also thought it strange that what should be some of the most dramatically important events in the film are rendered the most oblique, especially the closing segments, which just feel hurried.

Yeah, I really agree here. I didn't know what he was trying to say with Marina suddenly leaving with her tail between her legs (may be a unfortunate use of that phrase, sorry), which may just be me and my feelings about it, but it ties in with the idea that I lost track of the characters' feelings and motivations during this oblique, I'd call it coy closing stretch.

Going off on another track, and again this must just be me being pissy with Malick's story, but

[

Show Spoiler

concluding their story with dreamy shots of Marina in a boarding tunnel (going back whence she came!) was blech.

]

[eternity]

I've never seen an actor look so confused and discombobulated as Ben Affleck does in this. Wow.

[number8]

I found the cinematography in this... obvious, unoriginal, and generally not good? That feels weird to say about a Malick film, but it feels rehashed and repetitive. Does he have any new images to show us, since that's often his strength? Nick is right that half of this comes across as self-parody. I snickered when McAdams and Affleck were crying and fighting on piles of leaves. I think the key for Malick's exploration of emotions to work for me is if the film sells me on the subject matter it's grasping at immediately, and this one's is just highly annoying.

[Pop Trash]

Cineaste had a pretty harsh take down of post 70s Malick in their recent issue; this film in particular.

[Grouchy]

Jesus. Next time Malick attempts another two-hour-long exploration of his own asshole, count me out.

[wigwam]

we've all been counting you out of good movies since each of us joined the board, catch up already

[Ezee E]

we've all been counting you out of good movies since each of us joined the board, catch up already

Even Malick diehards are saying this is his worst, and a little overblown of his technique. I skipped it in the theater because I never heard anything positive about it.

[Rowland]

Even Malick diehards are saying this is his worst

Plenty of them aren't.

[baby doll]

Personally, I can't figure out why someone would find this film significantly worse than The Tree of Life. If any thing, the earlier film was even less unified (the birth of the universe segment was lovely but irrelevant) and had a far more rambling narrative (especially in the second hour, which is this endless succession of self-contained vignettes).

[Boner M]

the birth of the universe segment was lovely but irrelevant

OK.

[EyesWideOpen]

I would consider myself a Malick fan and this was one of my favorite films of the year. The only movie of his I haven't cared for was The Tree of Life.

[Watashi]

Yeah, this may be Malick's "worst", but I'll take his worst over 99% of most cinema out there.

[DavidSeven]

It has all the typical flaws of a Malick piece but only some of the standard pros. The big problem is that it lacks some of the natural effortlessness of his previous work. This one feels especially forced and put-on. McAdams sounded like she was on sedatives, and Affleck was a complete non-entity. Kurylenko has a pulse, but I wonder if Malick bothered to asked her to do anything besides jump and dance around childishly. This was like watching a seminar on performing the Manic Pixie Dream Girl sans dialogue. I did like some of the film's idiosyncrasies and thought there were some meaningful emotions to be felt toward the end, but yeah, this definitely skirted too closely to self-parody all-in-all.

[Izzy Black]

Marina definitely is not a MPDG. The film is about her.