To The Wonder

In his new film To The Wonder, if writer/director/auteur Terrence Malick were merely trying to show us that one's notion of love often leads to disappointment and confusion, it wouldn't have been much of a journey.  Rather, he uses a rather simple narrative, which is somewhat rare for Malick, to illustrate that one's notion of God can lead to the same level of perplexity.  Malick uses a painfully realistic story of a man, played with great restraint by a stoic* Ben Affleck, who falls in and out of love with two separate women, wreaking havoc in both of their lives, to drive home a bigger point about a believer's trust in God's will.  The man, whose name apparently is Neil, though I never heard anyone in the movie ever call him by that, wonders if love is something that can last forever.  He wonders if there exists a type of love that is devoid of difficult times.  As anyone over the age of 16 knows, there isn't.  You have to experience hard times in order to appreciate the good times.  Sometimes people have to experience pain and loss in order to understand what it means to believe in an almighty power.  Malick sort of shoves this parable down our throats by introducing an emotionally distressed Catholic priest, played quite well by Javier Bardem, who seeks out the poor, sick and disabled in order to figure out why God would allow such inequities to exist among his people.  He says, "all I see is destruction; ruin. Where is God?  Show yourself."  Fruitlessly, he goes in search of the healing and compassionate qualities that he has always known about God.

This is not a film about questioning the existence of God or the existence of love.  Those questions, most would agree, are easy to answer, and Malick doesn't waste our time exploring them.  It is rare to find someone on the fence about either one - I know the answer to both, with great certainty.  Instead, we get a film that questions why God and love have both the capability of such good and such pain at the same time.

The first woman we meet is a whimsical young French mother named Marina, played convincingly by Olga Kurylenko (Oblivion).  Actually, to call her whimsical might be a vast understatement.  Marina is always looking up to the sky, always playing, twirling, jumping on beds, stomping in puddles - acting like a child, even in her relationships.  At the start of the film, we see Neil and Marina falling deeply in love in and around Paris, which is shot with unending beauty by Malick.  She is in a constant state of motion, while Affleck is about as static as a human being can be while still maintaining a heart beat.  He walks slow, moves slow and talks very little.  A la Sergio Leone.

We come to find out that Marina's daughter, Tatiana, seems to see things that her mom can not.  She seems wise to the whole situation after they move to Oklahoma with Neil, telling her mom that "something's missing here."  She tells her mom that she has no friends and begins to rebel against her new family situation.  Tatiana turns out to be right, for Neil and Marina's love is fleeting.

Marina picks up and moves back to Paris, only to slip into months of deep depression after her daughter's father regains custody of Tatiana.  She calls Neil and asks if she can move back to the U.S. but is unaware that he has already found someone new.

Next up is Rachel McAdams, whose performance can best be described as minor-league, as she gets caught up in the whirlwind that surrounds Neil.  Through a death in the family, she has acquired a sprawling ranch in Oklahoma, which is falling into financial ruin.  We also find out that she lost her daughter somehow.  Neil says "I guess I came along at the right time" and quickly sweeps her off her feet.  This relationship ends just about as quickly as it started and Marina moves back to be with Neil again.

I found it interesting that Neil works for a company that drills for oil.  He is obsessed with the Earth (while Marina is obsessed with gazing to the sky).  I was reminded of Plato and Aristotle's dichotomy in Raphael's famous painting The School of Athens.  He is constantly testing the soil and the water.  People are getting sick from the oil that is contaminating their water supply.  "The tar comes right up out of the sidewalks," one resident says.  His company is literally poisoning people, just like he does to the women that he gets to fall in love with him.  He ruins their lives.

The opening ten minutes in France are breathtaking in their scope and splendor.  The story quickly moves to the United States and Oklahoma becomes the main setting, which has its own stark beauty.  Malick, who was raised in the south, is careful to show the beauty in all landscapes.  I have yet to see The New World, but I have enjoyed Malick's ability to showcase nature in all of his other films, particularly in Badlands and Days of Heaven.  He is an artist in the purest sense.  What I found so interesting was how amazing he made France look in the beginning but how dreadful he made it look when Marina was going through tough times.  It seems even a city can turn on you.

You get your typical Malickian elements:  whispered voice-overs, nature shots, wind, sun, tall grass, cerebral themes, artsy shots, anger, love, sweetness, ordinary people who are not actors, steadicam shots that follow people from low angles.  Here you also get multiple voice-over perspectives, and in three different languages.  Overall, there is very little dialogue.

This is far more than a "relationship movie."  It is much more than a film centered around a love triangle.  Malick uses that narrative drama as a vehicle to deliver his larger message.  People question their relationships with each other.  As it turns out, even priests question their relationship with God.  People yearn for something bigger.  Priests yearn for an understanding of our world.  It is worth noting that, according to Martin Sheen, Terrence Malick is one of the most deeply devout people he has ever known.

I'm not much for hyperbole and making comparisons, but I must say that I think I enjoyed this as much, if not more than any of Malick's other films, even The Tree of Life, which is one of my favorite films.  I came out of the theater thinking that it was the perfect partner with his last film - both use traditional narratives to deliver larger points.  Years down the road, when a young people are discovering Malick for the first time, I bet that they will be told to watch these two in succession, because of their similarities.  Not to mention, it is rare for Malick to jump right into a movie so quickly.  I've read that he has another movie right around the corner, which is exciting.

I need to see this again, but next time I'll see it alone, since my girlfriend claims it was the worst movie she has ever seen.  "Normal people would hate that movie," she said.  I loved it.  Perhaps I'm not normal.




*Interesting Footnote:  (I found this on a dictionary website) Stoic - A member of an originally Greek school of philosophy, founded by Zeno about 308 b.c., believing that God determined everything for the best and that virtue is sufficient for happiness. Its later Roman form advocated the calm acceptance of all occurrences as the unavoidable result of divine will or of the natural order.