To the Wonder (2013)

I have cited Terrence Malick as possibly the greatest of all active filmmakers. His latest feature, To the Wonder, is his sixth film in over four decades and the only thing he ever did that isn’t widely considered a masterpiece. His last movie, The Tree of Life, divided critics like nobody’s business and pretty much completely drove audiences away. This new movie is made in the same style as that one, but with a much less profound result. I praised The Tree of Life as the greatest film of 2011 because it moved me in a way few modern movies are still capable of doing. To the Wonder is a different kind of experience, intentionally less emotional and with very little plot to speak of. That makes it even more alienating than any of Malick’s other films and also, perhaps, a purer exercise in cinema.

There are four main characters in this film. They speak almost no actual dialogue, mostly communicating through voiceovers that are more like hearing their jumbled inner thoughts than traditional narration. The actors are Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko, Rachel McAdams and Javier Bardem. They are well cast in their parts, but really anyone could have been in the movie with the same result. This is a picture about people being and feeling more than saying and doing. It is photographed and edited in a manner that is passionately distant, giving the impression that Malick would rather film his characters than care about them, which would be a misinterpretation of his motives. The events of the film are partly autobiographical and I sense an undertone of regret. If Affleck is playing Malick, the director must not think very highly of himself.

Robert Black was the cinematographer here and I don’t think there’s a second of the movie that isn’t indescribably beautiful. The images evoke a dreamy atmosphere, as the camera drifts through the scenes with only a passing interest as to what’s happening in them. Malick is a big fan of nature and all his films feature extended outdoor scenes, but always with purpose. For example, To the Wonder features a stunning moment when our two lovers are trudging through a vast, empty shore as the tide comes in around them. In another startling scene, they drive out into a country field and are suddenly surrounded by dozens of buffalo.

Many viewers will complain that the movie is two hours of mostly unrelated images thrown together, but there is a great vision at work here. It’s true the scenes seldom reach completion before fading into the next one, and where the scenes are taking place in the grand scheme of the story can occasionally be a blur. However, each moment of this movie contains images that were filmed on purpose and they appear in the order that they do for a reason. We may not understand everything Malick has to say, but that doesn’t mean we never will or that he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

I admit my opinion of To the Wonder may not be entirely fair since I did go into it rather determined to like it. I can understand that there are many who simply don’t care for enigmatic movies like this, but I can’t find a real fault with it. What others find boring and pointless, I find utterly hypnotic, and I wouldn’t change a thing about it. In terms of modern art films, To the Wonder is heads above the rest of its ilk, often made without Malick’s adoration for cinema (Jean-Luc Godard, for instance, has quite run out of things to say.) It may not be a masterpiece when compared to other movies by Terrence Malick or in general, but it is still a great cinematic expression, a type of movie that defies comparisons to others. It joins The Tree of Life in a class of their own.  

9/10