To the Wonder

To the Wonder (2012)

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R - 112 min - Drama, Romance - 22 February 2013
Big Blue Sky Rating : 6.1/10

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Director : Terrence Malick
Writers : Terrence Malick
Stars : Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko, Javier Bardem, Rachel McAdams

Neil (Ben Affleck) is an American traveling in Europe who meets and falls in love with Marina (Olga Kurylenko), an Ukrainian divorcée who is raising her 10-year-old daughter Tatiana in Paris. The lovers travel to Mont St. Michel, the island abbey off the coast of Normandy, basking in the wonder of their newfound romance. Neil makes a commitment to Marina, inviting her to relocate to his native Oklahoma with Tatiana. He takes a job as an environmental inspector and Marina settles into her new life in America with passion and vigor. After a holding pattern, their relationship cools. Marina finds solace in the company of another exile, the Catholic priest Father Quintana (Javier Bardem), who is undergoing a crisis of faith. Work pressures and increasing doubt pull Neil further apart from Marina, who returns to France with Tatiana when her visa expires. Neil reconnects with Jane (Rachel McAdams), an old flame. They fall in love until Neil learns that Marina has fallen on hard times. ...

A series of images adding up to one relationship, and you get to add the meaning

Following up the dramatic success of "The Tree of Life" (2011), Terrence Malick has gone simpler but more abstract with "To the Wonder". Following only one relationship, we see Neil (Ben Affleck) and Marina (Olga Kurylenko) fall in love, grow apart, fight to stay together, and fight to stay apart. It's about the resolution, or lack of resolution, of one ill-fated romantic relationship.

The key is that we see them in these various stages. This is an entirely visual film with nothing else. No dialogue. There are a few random lines of narration and even fewer lines that one character may speak to another character, but following the strict definition of dialogue – a conversation between two or more people – there is no dialogue. There also isn't any characters. That's not really true, but we don't learn their names (I only got them from a plot summary), we don't learn anything about their past, and we also don't see them in between the turning points in their relationship.

The turning points in their relationship is likely a major factor in determining if you'll like the film. We apparently jump back and forth in time with flashbacks and flash-forwards but there is no distinction between the scenes, so you're just left to guess at what point of time they're in. But for lovers of subtle works of art, it also means that you get to figure out on your own what causes the relationship to crash and burn or rise above the flames.

At first I was offended by the depiction of the failing of their relationship. I thought Terrence Malick was the opposite of a misogynist and was representing women as ultimate perfection and completely innocent no matter how deplorable their actions. But then I realized that he wasn't saying anything at all. He was just presenting us with images and we get to add the meaning and words. Like a Mad-Lib, but not very funny.

Take one relationship, add in some beautiful scenery – both European and stateside, add in some Christian undertones, add in children, jobs and visas to create some important societal structure within the relationship, and then remove all conversations and orientation of time and you've got "To the Wonder". You can get out of it almost everything that you put into it – there's also something lost in the translation.

Watch To the Wonder Trailer :

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