To The Wonder Review

• 18th Jun 2013

To the Wonder is the most recent of Terence Malick’s current, unprecedented flurry of activity. Two films in as many years is unheard of from this famously strange director. To the Wonder is, on the surface, a surprisingly conventional sort of film, if unconventionally shot. It’s all boy meets girl, boy loses girl etc. Malick is not known for his realism–given to strange and fantastical films–and this is by far the most ‘normal’ of his output, firmly rooted in the contemporary world. Neil (Ben Affleck) is in love with a beautiful woman, Marina (Olga Kurylenko), eventually moving her and her 10 year old daughter from Paris to his hometown in Midwest America, with messy results. What was exciting and all-consuming in a foreign city does not translate well to the corn fields and ranches of his county life. They drift apart, together, apart. She leaves and he finds some strange, fleeting solace in an old childhood friend (Rachel McAdams), only for Marina to return, and the cycle beings anew. Alongside this pained relationship, only lightly intersecting, is a lost priest (Javier Bardem) who is struggling with life and faith alike.

It’s a Malick film, so obviously it is beautiful. The shots are dreamlike and the language, in the form of Marina’s soft stream of consciousness, is poetic. There is no dialogue to speak of: Affleck is verbally almost absent from the whole film. This results in an anchorless, floating chaos of beautiful shots and lingering, moody silences.

The French portion of the love story is strange, sad, almost joyless in its intensity. It is also slightly unreal. Unable to stop stroking and touching, skin and hair, yet rarely speaking; it doesn’t look like a relationship, it looks like pure infatuation. When grey, rainy France gives way to dry, open fields of America the emotion changes slightly–there is a tension that wasn’t present in the busy streets of Paris. But the childish playfulness that makes up the bulk of their interactions follows them there. Unfortunately, in the setting of Middle America, this non-vocal passion doesn’t quite work. It feels forced and unbelievable. Too much carefree running and whimsical giggling; Marina is almost feral, jumping on the bed, never simply talking face to face. She is a lonely, overgrown child, obsessed with the sensory, dancing through empty, bleak houses and avoiding any real contact with Neil.

Bardem’s depressed priest is bored with his own sermon, ministering to the very poor and hesitant in everything he does. His crisis of faith laves him rattling around an empty house, going through the motions of being a priest. His own stream of consciousness is darker and more structured. More of a prayer than a commentary, it does leave you wondering if the problems in Marina and Neil’s relationship is mirrored by this crisis of faith. He is completely disjointed and detached from his surroundings. Much like us, as an audience.

The first time we see any kind of adult communication is an argument, muted and cryptic. Plenty of thrown clothes and angry gestures, all without words. Tatiana, Marina’s young daughter, appears to be the only one able to say the things she feels. Her forceful declaration that “something is missing” in their featureless house in Oklahoma couldn’t be truer: ‘out of the mouths of babes’ indeed. There is plenty missing, and not just for the characters.

The DVD has a small ‘making of’ feature, which emphasises Malick’s odd, unconventional manner of working. We have the impression that the actors didn’t know quite what they were signing up for. There is also a short interview with Olga Kurylenko.

It’s beautiful. That I can’t deny. But it’s empty and somewhat vacuous. Without the far-reaching strangeness of his usual output, the film is a frustrating portrait of the unsatisfying nature of love. What is Malick saying with To the Wonder? Are we supposed to fear foreign things? Fear faith? Or is it just that everything fades, everything changes, and nothing is forever. If this is Malick’s vision of love and life, it’s unbelievably sad.

 Hannah Turner