To the Wonder

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.

If you enjoy seeing a lot of twirling, this is a movie you don't want to miss. The two female leads twirl wherever they are, grocery shopping, walking anywhere, not just on the beach but in grocery stores on casual strolls; and they never get dizzy. These women are every man's dream, Rachael McAdams wears makeup: lipstick, mascara, eyeliner-the whole nine yards, while she's bailing hay. It's amazing. To add to the enjoyment, there's no real plot. At least one you haven't seen before, albeit without the twirling. Olga Kurylenkoand and Ben Afflack never age because, I guess, they walk on the beach a lot while twirling. But eventually, all that twirling gets to them and he gets bored with her and then she gets bored with him and a priest gets bored with god and finally, the viewer gets dizzy watching.

Terrence malick, director behind last years most discussed picture, 'The Tree of Life', has snuck his new film 'to the wonder' into the venice film festival. I came here to see The Master, but was also interested in Malicks new film. i was hesitant to get excited for it though. Malick is widely regarded as a control freak as a director, meditating for years, and releasing his films incredibly infrequently. i felt that it was way too early between drinks for malick to release another work. after such a personal film like TTOF, i thought this might be more of a minor work, like how the Coen brothers did No Country and followed up with the minimalistic screw-ball comedy 'burn after reading'. How unprepared and wrong i was.

To The Wonder is a magnificent film. The tree of life was a towering achievement IMHO, and this film doesn't fall short by much in terms of scope, ambition and achievement. by any standards its a great film. its a strong addition to malick's small yet vital body of work. The acting is very good, but like TTOF, takes a a bit of a back seat for malick to do his thing. Affleck and McAdams a very good, as are bardem and kurylenko. i don't want to give away to many plot specifics or character details. most of that is in the lengthy plot synopsis released online yesterday anyway. it is very dream-like, and has a lack of dialogue like TTOF. it tells most of its story through imagery, music and how characters physically act towards each other. i never liked affleck as an actor before this. he's good here, but i wouldn't have minded someone else in the role.

About what affleck said yesterday. that to the wonder makes TTOF look like transformers. that statement is so exaggerated and pretty much wrong. if anything, TTOF is still more experimental than TO THE WONDER. that doesn't detract from the huge ambition of this film though. I'm so excited to see malick working quicker now. it really is a dream to have malick films in 3 successive years. next year is knight of cups. couldn't be more excited. like TTOF, this film will richly reward repeat viewing, but is a little more accessible than TTOF. people who had problems with the whole universe and dinosaurs thing in TTOF wont have to worry here. although ambitious, it is a little more grounded, and will be more palatable to a bigger audience. thats not to say that the mainstream will embrace this film, because they wont. its a malick film through and through, and i couldn't be more grateful for that.

Before i saw this, the race for my favourite film of the year had really boiled down to THE MASTER (which was great, but still processing) and BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD. Malick's film has opened up the field. 5/5

I am a huge Terrence Malick fan and have loved everything he has done, up until this. This is not a good film. It's drawn out, has a very uninteresting script, and just fails to entertain, stimulate, or do anything really.

It's a two hour wide angle shot of Ben Affleck being in a shitty relationship. Hmm...

That being said, the camera work is pretty great, as is the case with most of Malick's work, but that's pretty much it. There is almost no story to speak of, to even remember as I write this review. The French woman could have gone back home at any time and spared everyone the pain of their crappy relationship. Instead, she decides to draw out what everyone knows is a doomed scenario.

Malick should honestly have retired with the Tree of Life. It was excellent, and utilized the dreamy, wide-angle drawn out sequences very well, unlike here, where they are relied on to make up for a lack of substance.

I don't really recommend this film to anyone. If you are a Malick fan, it will severely diminish your appreciation for him, as it is as pretentious as it is boring.

TO THE WONDER is the new film from master writer/director Terrence Malick. The story begins with Ben Affleck's character, Neil, in Paris where he falls in-love with a single mother named Marina, played by the beautiful Olga Kurylenko. Neil brings his new love and her daughter, Tatiana, back home with him to the United States. When Marina's visa expires and Affleck's character is reluctant to marry her, Marina and her daughter return to Paris. Neil begins spending his time with a childhood friend, Jane, played by Rachel McAdams. However Jane is a woman of great faith, a faith that Neil does not share. Back in Paris, Tatiana leaves to go live with her father and Marina becomes depressed, longing to return to the US to try to work things out with Neil. It is at this point that the story falls apart.

It's impossible not to compare TO THE WONDER to THE TREE OF LIFE simply because the two films are shot in the exact same style. Beautiful shots and gorgeous cinematography accompanied by a classical score and poetic voice-overs from the characters. The Tree of Life was and is not only a masterpiece, but one of the greatest films to ever be made. I thought maybe To The Wonder was a little too soon for another Malick epic but I do not believe that is the case as far as why this film fails.

The two characters I felt for and wanted to see more of was Javier Bardem's Father Quintana and Rachel McAdams' Jane. Here we have a priest struggling in his relationship with God and a woman who has suffered through the grief and loss of a child, yet has found a way to continue living in harmony with great faith. These highly interesting characters are under-used as the film focuses more on Neil and Marina, who by the end of the film, we begin to hate.

The actors do not help the film tell it's story, it almost seems like they walked on-set without a script and improvised their parts. In Tree Of Life we had Jessica Chastain, Sean Penn and Brad Pitt giving the performances of a lifetime, not through dialogue, but simply through facial expression, movement and body language. There wasn't a need for scenes of dialogue, the story was understood. With To The Wonder, I was craving a scene of dialogue towards the end. I didn't want to believe Affleck and Kurylenko's characters were as shallow and selfish as they seemed, I wanted and felt I deserved to know more about them and why they continued to struggle. Why are they so frustrated and angry?

No matter how abstract or convoluted a film is, I've never had an issue coming to some sort of an understanding and usually, the more a film leaves open for me to interpret myself, the more I respect the film. However, To The Wonder leaves us with two characters we no longer have any reason to care for and the film gives us no way to understand or relate to them in the end.