To the Wonder (2012)

I kept passing by this movie "On Demand" and finally gave it my $6.99 (sigh). I should have listened to my gut. I am not a film critic. I am a film lover and I enjoy all genres of films. I do not like to write reviews but I could not pass by without saying something about this dreadful movie. I liked Tree of Life. That movie is not this movie and comes nowhere near it. Tree of Life made me "think" and I watched it twice in one weekend. To the Wonder had me turning it off at 1:25 but wanting to turn it off after 20 minutes. Ben doesn't say more than a few lines and get your hearing aids out because you can barely hear him. Same goes for the other characters in this movie, they whispher. As if the viewer isn't already trying to piece some kind of story together the director goes further and makes what little lines there are in this worthless piece of celluloid uninteresting and completely void of detail! Oh and don't think I'm not into art, imagery, impression etc, Oh I am, but this didn't cut it, they should have left it all on the cutting floor. If you are going to make this special type of film you best do it quite well or don't bother. I didn't care about anybody in this film. Two beautiful women twirling in fields, in curtains, in their hair....nauseating!!! You see Ben's head or half his body and him touching the ladies on their back or pulling his hand away. You see empty stairwells, empty rooms (good lord buy some furniture already). You see a little girl running through a supermarket and her line, "it's so clean"....REALLY, wow? This movie was horrendous. I honestly can't believe somebody made money off this junk. You can't make out what they say and when they do say something it's boring. This movie is truly awful and damn near put me into a coma. I can handle bad movies (Mommy Dearest was bad, so bad I loved it) and I don't ever turn a movie off that I paid 6.99 to view at home. That should tell you something. PASS THIS ONE!

Fmovies: This movie tries so hard to be beautiful, it hurts. I got a beauty overdose after 20 minutes. The cinematography is so gorgeous, it should be used to teach photography students, especially ultra-wide lens work. There is a lot of beautiful acting by insanely beautiful Olga Kurylenko and then some by beautiful Rachel McAdams, whose character is absolutely unnecessary, by the way. Not much more in terms of acting, though. Even the great Javier Bardem was acting Ben Affleck style - making serious faces and trying not to look stupid. Both extremely beautiful, of course. The score was quite beautiful, too. Other than all that beauty, there was nothing. No plot, no dialogues. Scattered pseudo-spiritual monologues in five languages did not help much, and reading meaningless subtitles distracted me from watching the aforementioned beauty. Bottom line: way too much beauty and zero content. Recommended to aspiring photographers and very patient Olga Kurylenko fans.

Greetings again from the darkness. Director Terrence Malick makes films that typically fall into the "love it or hate it" genre. He has a very loyal group of fans (of which I am one) who appreciate the unique mental and emotional ride that his projects provide. To say that his films are not accessible is understandable. His objective is to challenge you to access your own beliefs and thoughts, rather than the characters in his movies ... they are simply the tools he uses.

Less than two years ago, I was struggling to put thoughts into words after watching Malick's The Tree of Life. Now, in record time for him, he releases another film that is even more impressionistic ... actually abstract is not too strong a description. The usual Malick elements are present - nature, uncomfortable relationships, minimal dialogue, breathtaking photography, and powerful music. Where The Tree of Life focused on Creation and Family, this latest takes on Love and Faith.

Water imagery is a frequent key as we see the personal relationship mimic the changing of the seasons. Neil (Ben Affleck), an American visiting Paris, meets and falls for Marina (Olga Kurylenko), a free-spirited local filled with light and energy. Their love affair moves to the stunning Mont Saint-Michel before settling in the drab plains of Bartlesville, Oklahoma.

It's not surprising that the relationship suffers as the newness wears thin. The interesting part is how Malick presents it. We mostly witness bits and pieces ... he shows us moments, not events. We easily see that Neil's aloofness and sullen looks don't jibe with Marina's effervescence. When she returns to Paris, Neil easily falls in with an old flame played by Rachel McAdams. When she later accuses him of making what they had "nothing", we all understand what she means ... and why.

While Neil is proving what a lost soul he is, we also meet Father Quintana (Javier Bardem). He has lost the light of his faith and is in full crisis mode, even as he attempts to console and guide Marina. There is no secret that much of this film is autobiographical and that Malick is working through wounds he still carries these many years later. As a movie-goer, there is little to be gained from Alleck's disconnected character or from Kurylenko dancing in the rain. The real prize is awakening the thoughts and feelings many of us probably buried over the years to hide emotional pain. Malick seems to be saying that it's OK to acknowledge your foundation, regardless of your ability to succeed in a socially acceptable manner.

If you prefer not to dig so deep emotionally, this is a beautiful film to look at - thanks to Director of Photograpy Emmanuel Lubezki (a frequent Malick collaborator), and listen to - a blended soundtrack with many notable pieces from various composers. While this will be remembered as Roger Ebert's final movie review (he liked it very much), it will likely have very little appeal to the average movie watcher - and I'm confident that Terrence Malick is fine with that.

To the Wonder fmovies. Some people say that film is like a language, but that is not exactly right, it is like language itself, and just as there are different languages, there are different cinemas. It seems to me that, in his last two films, Terrence Malick has been creating a very special type of cinema, that had hitherto existed only in an embryonic form. While most films have maybe 50-100 scenes, replete with dialogue and action, Malick's new cinema (MNC) has over twice that number of scenes, but they are fragmentary and consist of only the essence of meaning that was in a scene that would normally have been much longer. This can be sometimes several minutes or only a couple of brief shots.

Last evening I drove the 25 miles to see the early performance of 'To the Wonder'. I did that with the intention of returning to write this review while the film was still fresh in my mind. But after it I was so drained that I couldn't write a summary, let alone a review. At the current (late) stage in my life, what interests me most about the cinema is its limits. How far can the cinema go, and what exactly is a film?

Given the above, Terrence Malick is evidently the man for me, and I am convinced that 'The Tree of Life' is among the five greatest works of this greatest of the arts. So, after a masterpiece 30 years in the gestation and three + in the creation, how would Malick fare with a film relatively thrown together in a year or so?

On the face of it, this is a story of the relationship which starts in Paris between an American (environmentalist?), Neil, and an otherworldly French woman (Marina). When they return to mid-west America, Marina suffers from a sense of dislocation made greater when he daughter decides to go and live with her father in France.

But Malick seems much less interested in the *events* which he depicts than in expressing the feelings of the characters. Just the same way that 'The Tree of Life' was an *impression* of childhood, rather than the story of a childhood, 'To the Wonder' is an impression of a love affair, rather than its story. This is cinema infused in every shot with Heidegger's *dasein*. The logic of Malick's cinema is to *perfectly* catch the moment, and in doing so extract the truth of the experience. Hence, for Malick, a film story, is simply an assembly of 'essences'. These essences stay in the mind to thrill and haunt us.

There have been other examples of great filmmakers who have made films exploring the cinema's intimate connection with mental processes - Resnais and Bunuel come immediately to mind. But with Malick, it seems, the cinema's similarity to the mental processes of memory, dream and conjecture, have ignited a wildfire of creativity that has advanced the film art at a greater pace than has occurred since the sixties.

Here I have to admit to being only at the beginning of being able to appreciate what seems to be dizzying complexities in the film. My French is not up to totally understanding much of Marina's dialogue which, as I am in France, was not translated in the subtitles, so I am sure I have missed an entire dimension of the film. But Olga Kurylenko's performance is so magnificent, that this 'comprehension gap' didn't seem a problem.

Then there is the obvious question of the film's theme. Love, the very 'different' nature of women, dislocation in the physical, emotional and cultural senses - these are all up there writ large. But they are mixed wi

Like other reviewers, I am not opposed to alternative ways of telling a story. Less dialog, more imagery and more music is fine. But you still have to fill in some details. This one doesn't.

Why do reviewers keep saying that the woman was a Russian expatriate in Paris? Because the actress is Ukranian? I didn't catch any dialog explaining that she was anything other than French. Why do they keep saying that the second part of the movie was in Bartlesville, Oklahoma? I never heard any mention of the state or the town. I understand that it was filmed there, but the movie didn't tell me anything about it.

What the hell was the guy doing in Paris? What is wrong with the woman? She seems a little bit retarded. She keeps twirling around in circles like she is not fully engaged in the reality of life. Is it because she is a bohemian, Parisian existentialist poet, or just immature, or what? What does the guy do for a living? He seems to take samples of pond water and weeds. Is he doing the geological survey for a building project? There are no normal conversations in this film. Much of it is whispered in French, with subtitles about the mystery of love and loneliness. After the pretentious and petulant non-French, French woman leaves the film for a bit, Rachel Adams emerges with no makeup. Then she too begins whispering about the nature of love and loss.

Javier Bardem has a compelling screen presence in most of his work and in this one he looks troubled and pensive. I would have loved to find out more about this character's life. A priest in a small town might feel very lonely.

I do understand that the Director and Writer are trying to show lonely, lost souls and make some statement about how we are all looking to connect to something... be it a city, a romance, God, or a poetic version of life. But I can't watch that for 90 minutes without going stark raving mad.

Yes, the cinematography was nice. I liked that the annoying French girl actually said that she was sick of Paris. Film makers love to portray Paris as the Garden of Eden, but it is not a coastal city. It gets gloomy and cold, and there are loads of angry ethnics on fixed incomes.

I actually think the semi-porn "Nine Songs" does a bit better job of showing the initial obsession of a love affair and the ugly decline when boredom and routine set in with immature, shallow people.

Stay away.

...wrote french author Victor Hugo and Terrence Malick's "To the Wonder" seems at times to agree and at times wanting disprove that quote. As ancient as the mistake of falling in love appears to be, as unavoidable and necessary it is. In his impressionistic style which will enrapture some and drive most insane, this latest piece of work by one of America's most unusual filmmakers continues his exploration of emotional truths, identity, intimacy and individual freedom which leads us into ever changing emotional states.

Without a clear structure or narrative but accompanied by breathtaking images, a very expressive music and ambient soundtrack and extremely subtle performances, are we drawn into the lives of a business man (Ben Affleck), a Russian expatriate (Olga Kurylenko), the daughter of a farm owner (Rache McAdams) and the priest of a small town in Oklahoma (Javier Bardem). Their thoughts and struggles on love, commitment, God and marriage along with their the fights and atonement are presented in fractured moments that reveal the various elements of human contradiction which constantly tear us in two directions at the same time. We want freedom and comfort, love and domesticity, desire and stability. The compromise lies in accepting which side of us is the one that defines us the most and if we can live, at least partly, with the lack of the other, in order to achieve as Bardem's Father Quintana puts it:"The love that never changes."

Amidst this metaphysical and highly personal journey Malick gives us not only a sense of the "wonder of love" but also celebrates our sense of wonder in general. Our ability to be overwhelmed by our emotions for another person, nature or even God.

"To the Wonder" is a film about faiths in many shapes and strives for that forgiveness that elates our disappointments and resentments in order to finally love in a state of personal liberty and acceptance.

A movie for a few with a theme for everybody.