To the Wonder

Has there been a more visually engaging movie in past few years than The Tree of Life?

There have certainly been aesthetically compelling movies with better stories or more memorable individual moments – in fact, there were many films from just 2011 that I found more satisfying as overall experiences. That said, I’m hard pressed to find a film that felt as fully engaging the full way through just on the strength of images on screen. There will always gripes about the lack of narrative drive, the Sean Penn material, the ending, and most significantly the lengthy interlude involving the creation of the universe; yet even people I know who disliked the film on first viewing concede that its sweeping and luminous atmosphere makes it hard to resist every time it comes on TV.

That film was a much anticipated, long in the works passion project by Terrence Malick, cinema’s most famous recluse. The fact that his new project, To the Wonder, was finished so quickly thereafter feels almost jarring. In theory, Malick’s newfound productivity should be a welcome development; after seeing To the Wonder, I’m not so sure.

The plot itself is less than threadbare, tracking the ups and downs of a relationship between an Oklahoma contractor (Ben Affleck) and his European lover (Olga Kurylenko). There is some business involving Rachel McAdams as Affleck’s childhood friend and Javier Bardem as a conflicted priest, but let’s face it: it’s a Malick movie, so the camera is the real star here.

This is Malick’s third collaboration with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, and, on a purely technical level, To the Wonder comes close to matching their landmark work on Tree of Life. The camera feels less like storytelling tool than a part of the ether, seemingly capable of being everywhere at once. For every scenic shot of the magic-hour on the Oklahoma countryside, there are equally stunning moments of natural light creeping though a window, or ripples moving through a pond; even a trip to a supermarket or a Sonic drive-thru has an ethereal beauty to it.

What’s makes this film unique in Malick’s filmography is that it’s the first to take place entirely within the present-day. All of Malick’s films have dealt with man’s relationship to the natural world, though almost always through the prism of a bygone era. In this case, he seems to be directly channeling a sense a growing unease and discordance, as the artificial sprawl of model homes and strip malls impede on the bison-laden plains of the old world. It isn’t hard to see this conflict as a mirror to the turmoil between Affleck and Kurylenko’s struggling couple.

Unfortunately this is where the film falls apart. Malick has never been interested in straight narratives, and I didn’t expect one from him this time. About halfway through To the Wonder, however, I kept thinking back to Tree of Life- how by that point we already had a clear sense of the characters and their environment. We already understood the regrets of Brad Pitt’s father figure, and how it influenced his strict parenting. We saw Jessica Chastain’s nurturing and graceful nature, and how it put her in opposition to her husband. We opened with the family experiencing the loss of a loved one, and felt how it impacted the proceedings. In this case, we aren’t given any of that. As a result, the film often feels like a beautifully shot but overlong gallery installation.

Ultimately this is a disservice to the actors, who much of the time seem as baffled by the material as we are (undoubtedly a result of Malick’s cleaving swaths of material in post-production). Affleck in particular seems to have gotten the short end of the stick; he is capable of strong work when given the right material, but he simply doesn’t have the natural presence of someone like Brad Pitt to carry long, wordless stretches of film. Kurylenko is left to carry much of the film, which she mostly does admirably, but her abilities only go so far as Malick loses his grip toward the end.

The only character that Malick seems to connect 100% with is Javier Bardem’s lonely, spiritually afflicted priest. His several short scenes carry more sympathy and weight than the countless shots of Olga Kurylenko waifishly prancing through fields of wheat. That in a nutshell is why To the Wonder comes up short – Malick has abandoned the deeply-felt connection that anchored Tree of Life for something seemingly more conceptual. As a result, for all of the visual splendor up on the screen, it occasionally comes close to self-parody.

Part of me feels like I would have responded more positively to this film had I not seen Shane Currth’s Upstream Color the night before. That film had an emotional and personal component that justified its enigmatic visual style. As a result, that film, like Tree of Life, practically demands multiple viewings to unpack everything. To the Wonder, I’m sad to say, is mostly a one-and-done deal.