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To The Wonder - 22/2/2013 6:28:19 PM

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Post #: 1

To the Wonder - 22/2/2013 6:28:19 PM

R W

Posts: 268
Joined: 23/6/2006

A couple of years ago, the release of The Tree of Life, Terrence Malick�s fifth and most ambitious film which could simply be identified a 50�s-set family drama but it also delves into the birth of creation whilst having all the Malick credentials such as whispered narration, experimental narrative and plants blown by the wind. This film had polarised both critics and audiences, and if you�re not part of the Terrence Malick fandom, then To the Wonder will not be your cup of tea.

As Neil (Ben Affleck) moves to Oklahoma with his European lover Marina (Olga Kurylenko) and her daughter (Titiana Chiline), their relationship begins fall apart, so Neil reconnects with old childhood friend Jane (Rachel McAdams). Meanwhile, Marina�s US priest Father Quintana (Javier Bardem) suffers a crisis of faith.

While The Tree of Life was sprawling and kind of went all over the place with dinosaurs, strange Lynchian imagery (Jessica Chastain floating on invisible puppet strings) and Sean Penn walking from one location to another, To the Wonder, in comparison, is more linear and intimate as the narrative is solely focusing on Neil (played by an almost-non-verbal Affleck) and his loved ones, along with the subplot of Javier Bardem�s good Father Quintana�s struggle with faith, which although contributes to the flawed relationship between Neil and Marina, the ideas of the priest witnessing and questioning a godless universe don�t quite come full circle.

When it comes to Malick�s films, the actors don�t say a lot although the Calvin Klein-sounded narration as always is the true audio of his films, this time round mostly French. That said, Olga Kurylenko is utterly delightful as Marina whose presence alone is wonderful, while Emmanuel Lubezki�s stunning cinematography is one of the stars of the film as Oklahoma hasn�t looked more beautiful.

While not as ambitious and perhaps challenging as The Tree of Life, To the Wonder is more easy-going as the sole focus on the lovers� intimacy is the main strength of Malick�s touching story of love.

(in reply to Empire Admin)

Post #: 2

RE: frustrating, tender, and emotionally earnest to a f... - 26/2/2013 11:58:29 PM

ElephantBoy

Posts: 7359
Joined: 13/4/2006

As flat as a Malick film can get.

To pick up on some of the themes rised in RW's more postive review, it is one thing to present a film as a moody, documentary piece, with more relance on voice over, it is quite another to give the viewer almost no story or character devolpment over the course of the film, and unlike Tree of Life this doesn't at least have bold themes. Also said voice over, was over used and just over telegraphed the point and unlike you I found said french girl very annoying.

Things startied to heat up in the middle, with the introduction of the Rachel McAdams character, those scenes just had more energy and felt more surreal, meaning my interest peaked, but sadly that all came to nothing, because like the Bardem priest character that strend was also given far too little time.

Visually it is one of the best films you see all year and the score was impressive also, but thats about it.

4/10

Post #: 3

RE: frustrating, tender, and emotionally earnest to a f... - 1/3/2013 4:32:55 PM

Filmfan 2

Posts: 973
Joined: 30/9/2005

One can only assume that Malick has a massive soft spot for ballet, or performance art, as his recent output has been moving very much in that direction.

I saw this yesterday and I thoroughly enjoyed it. As with a lot of Malick's movies, you either love them or hate them. His past two efforts have been quite sublime in places; indeed, the sequence in the movie where Neil and Jane spend time together that is accompanied by 'Cantus Arcticus, Op. 61, �Concerto for Birds and Orchestra�: III. Joutsenet Muuttavat (Swans Migrating)', is probably one of the most rapturous sequences that I've in the cinema for quite some time.

I'd agree with R W in that Javier Bardem's Father Quintana is left at a bit of a loose end come the end of the movie, but perhaps that's fitting given his character's struggle with his faith. Tree of Life made me fall in love with Jessica Chastain and Malick's done it again for me with Olga Kurylenko, who has a fantastically engaging screen presence. Special mention should be made to Emmanuel Lubezki's cinematography, which is spectacular throughout.

Highly enjoyable.

< Message edited by Filmfan 2 -- 1/3/2013 4:33:33 PM >

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Post #: 4

RE: frustrating, tender, and emotionally earnest to a f... - 2/3/2013 2:00:35 PM

ElephantBoy

Posts: 7359
Joined: 13/4/2006

quote:

ORIGINAL: Filmfan 2

One can only assume that Malick has a massive soft spot for ballet, or performance art, as his recent output has been moving very much in that direction.

I saw this yesterday and I thoroughly enjoyed it. As with a lot of Malick's movies, you either love them or hate them. His past two efforts have been quite sublime in places; indeed, the sequence in the movie where Neil and Jane spend time together that is accompanied by 'Cantus Arcticus, Op. 61, �Concerto for Birds and Orchestra�: III. Joutsenet Muuttavat (Swans Migrating)', is probably one of the most rapturous sequences that I've in the cinema for quite some time.
I'd agree with R W in that Javier Bardem's Father Quintana is left at a bit of a loose end come the end of the movie, but perhaps that's fitting given his character's struggle with his faith. Tree of Life made me fall in love with Jessica Chastain and Malick's done it again for me with Olga Kurylenko, who has a fantastically engaging screen presence. Special mention should be made to Emmanuel Lubezki's cinematography, which is spectacular throughout.

Highly enjoyable.

I agree with this, and that was the best scetion for me, but they did little after that.

Think I will return to this as I just find it hard to believe that Malick film was this dull.

(in reply to Filmfan 2)

Post #: 5

RE: frustrating, tender, and emotionally earnest to a f... - 2/3/2013 2:34:52 PM

Qwerty Norris

Posts: 3156
Joined: 26/10/2005
From: Edinburgh

Terrence's most prolific streak has predicated the weakest entry in his career to date. There's a clear narrative regarding the immigrant experience in a foreign land and how that adopted homeland reaffirms or questions the pursuit of of love, faith or belonging. Yet this is compromised by an awkward 30 minute segment involving Affleck & McAdams which gives the film less focus (even by Malick's often meandering style) and far less ambiguity than Affleck's character should be. In a work where dialogue is also fairly minimal, it's a pity the one who does get a bit of a spiel (Olga's Italian mate) ends up being extremely irritating and hypocritical. Perhaps that hypocrisy's the point, but it annoyed more than anything else. Still a visual and lyrical treat, but the likes of Days of Heaven did a lot more in far less time.

3/5

_____________________________

Qwerty's Top 10 of 2013 (so far)

1. Zero Dark Thirty
2. No
3. A Hijacking
4. In The Fog
5. Good Vibrations
6. McCullin
7. Beyond the Hills
8. The Place Beyond the Pines
9. Wreck-it Ralph
10. Shell

(in reply to ElephantBoy)

Post #: 6

RE: To The Wonder - 6/3/2013 10:38:46 PM

demoncleaner

Posts: 2166
Joined: 3/10/2005
From: Belfast

To Terrence Malick everything is elliptical - time, the movement of the planets, the kinetic elegance of a fairground ride or the rise and fall of an industrial rotary pump. Oh and people, people are elliptical most of all. This is a film where people largely emote by pirouetting when happy, whilst in a mood, they�ll lope around in circles staring at their feet. So obvious is this in To The Wonder that you expect a concerned bystander to maybe come up and interject with a gentle warning �listen love, if you emote any more you�re liable to get hit by a fucking car�. In the first dizzying rushes of the film Ben Affleck and Olga Kurylenko convey a romance largely reminiscent of two apes picking nits out of one another. If you walked in late to this frenetic quest between a couple to catch a quick public grope you might be forgiven for thinking you�d arrived at Steve McQueen�s latest film on frottage. These are the immediate features of To The Wonder and it would be a difficult oeuvre to accept from anyone other than the chap who made The Tree of Life. I found Malick�s last film both sufficiently majestic and perplexing to cite it an achievement but it�s also an invaluable bedding in for this film. If Wonder had been Malick�s next film after The Thin Red Line for instance, well I dare say I�d go buck fucking mental at this, but post-Tree it really is difficult to empathise with an audience member who was not prepared in some way for what they were letting themselves in for. For this reason I was able to �go with� this film to a large extent, to withstand the notable on-those-nose introspection, and the all too prevalent opportunities for parody and piss-take.

And so on balance I liked To The Wonder. More than that, I actually loved the first hour, which seemed to lull me into a kind of dental gas fugue state of dreamy visuals, a constant diaphanous movement of the image that achieved a �just right� compromise between a feeling of flying and car sickness. The entire film is obviously a mood piece but the moods in the first part of the film were I think far more palatable than they were in the second. The early stages bore little nostalgia pulses for me which is what I got most of all from Tree of Life, growing up on crummy housing estates that were as beautiful as anything on a summer�s evening, an outgoing community sitting on their lawns, and also a sense of home-sickness that can pervade at any random time in a person's life. These were the broad, universal moods I felt some access to and it all tripped along quite pleasantly because you didn�t have to engage with it on a semantic level. Because if you had to have a conscious interpretation of what was going on onscreen it might irritate. Which is kind of what I felt happened as it progressed.

It�s with the arrival of Rachel McAdams that this happened and the spell was kind of broken for me. And that�s nothing to with Rachel McAdams, it�s just the arrival of a new character makes you ask �what�s her deal?� and �do I want her to be happy or do I want Olga Kurylenko to be happy, and are they mutually exclusive?�. It�s small, natural questions like these that lessen the universality of Wonder�s benign mood swings, makes it less about broad circumstance and more about the fickleness of small minded characters, and the thing about fickleness is that�s it�s a difficult thing to watch passively and not be slightly irritated by. Irritation comes into even sharper relief when Kurylenko�s character is influenced by an annoying free-spirit girlfriend and from then on in the domestic situation between the two main characters is entirely predicated on simple brattishness. The only thing that upholds the broad and innate theme of �human-ness� is Javier Bardem�s priest, who, as a character whose day job it is to dialogue with God his inner voice is the only one in recent Malick that actually succeeds without overtly sounding like a Calvin Klein ad. The later passages of his visits with the infirm were rightly affecting and it seemed to come at the right time to pull this modest enterprise back on an affirming track.

3/5

< Message edited by demoncleaner -- 6/3/2013 10:49:25 PM >

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Post #: 7

RE: frustrating, tender, and emotionally earnest to a f... - 6/3/2013 10:47:48 PM

demoncleaner

Posts: 2166
Joined: 3/10/2005
From: Belfast

quote:

ORIGINAL: Qwerty Norris

Terrence's most prolific streak has predicated the weakest entry in his career to date. There's a clear narrative regarding the immigrant experience in a foreign land and how that adopted homeland reaffirms or questions the pursuit of of love, faith or belonging. Yet this is compromised by an awkward 30 minute segment involving Affleck & McAdams which gives the film less focus (even by Malick's often meandering style) and far less ambiguity than Affleck's character should be. In a work where dialogue is also fairly minimal, it's a pity the one who does get a bit of a spiel (Olga's Italian mate) ends up being extremely irritating and hypocritical. Perhaps that hypocrisy's the point, but it annoyed more than anything else. Still a visual and lyrical treat, but the likes of Days of Heaven did a lot more in far less time.

3/5

The planets have aligned Qwerty! We appear to be in agreement, right down to the individual bits we thought worked and ones that didn't. What's next? Cats and dogs living with each other, the whole world's couped!

_____________________________

"I know the meaning of life, it doesn't help me a bit."

(in reply to Qwerty Norris)

Post #: 8

The only wonder is how I sat through it - 16/3/2013 10:07:20 AM

Itsaboy

Posts: 1
Joined: 16/3/2013

Words cannot express how much I hated this film. As I watched I became more and more incensed by Malik's empty posturing, tedious pseudo-spiritual babble, undeveloped charactersand total disregard for the audience. This tendency has, of course, been growing over his last four films at least and now reaches its full flowering. If I see one more charater walking moodily through high grass, dancing joyously down supermarket aisle or draping themselves in net curtains, I shall scream. Sure, the film looks great (as always with Malik) but this does not in itself make for a great or even watchable film. I spoke to several people as they left the cinema and this seemed to be a unanimous view. No more Malik for me, ever.

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Post #: 9

RE: The only wonder is how I sat through it - 26/3/2013 11:49:07 PM

Coyleone

Posts: 482
Joined: 13/10/2008

I'm a huge Malick fan, and this is another brilliant work from him imo. I found it to be a totally realistic, unsentimental take on relationships, breakups and love. It explores similar themes that he looked at in Days Of Heaven, but mixes that with elements from his other films. As always with Malick, Nature is something that he focuses on, and I love his depiction of the female characters in his films as being a part of it, this is no different. He films his actresses like goddesses, and in this case the amazing specimens that they are. He presents his characters like forces of nature or elements, it adds this aura of mystique to the film that was present in Tree Of Life and I loved it there and I loved it here too. Obviously it's Malick so the film looks completely stunning in every frame. Shots of nature, tree's, water and light look amazing but also represent various parts of the characters personality's and feelings.

Another thing I loved about this was that every action from the character's meant something and symbolized something to come for them. For example in the first scenes with the couple at their peak and in love, she is always in complete control. He follows her as she weaves between trees, it almost feels like a dance sequence sometimes, and there always feels like there's a distance between them that she is purposefully creating. As for the actual story, it's simple but effective. It's love that turns into annoyance that turns into genuine dislike, but despite the surreal nature of the way it's told (barely any dialogue, and when it is it's mostly narration, and the fact that the actor's movements and actions do most of the talking), it's a very realistic portrayal of love and loss. As for the actors, Olga Kurylenko is brilliant in the female lead, playing a woman who falls out of love so convincingly. It's not because of one specific moment, it's just the passing of time that does it to her and it's so well played. Affleck isn't the best actor, but he's absolutely fine here. All he's required to do is generate chemistry between himself and the female leads and he definitely does that.

There are some things that didn't quite do it for me though. Those are Rachel McAdams and Javier Bardem's characters. While they're really well acted, I didn't feel they added much to the overall story. Malick also interjects some religious themes in here, questions of faith and of a higher power are brought up especially in the third act, and while it worked in Tree Of Life I thought it was kind of out of place in this film. Aside from those problems, I loved it. A great portrayal of a relationship done in Malick's signature style that adds a lot more subtle depth to everything. I thought it was really effective and it's my film of the year so far. It won't make any new Malick fans, but for people that are already, it won't disappoint.

8.5/10

(in reply to Itsaboy)

Post #: 10

RE: The only wonder is how I sat through it - 27/3/2013 3:23:03 PM

ElephantBoy

Posts: 7359
Joined: 13/4/2006

quote:

ORIGINAL: Itsaboy

Words cannot express how much I hated this film. As I watched I became more and more incensed by Malik's empty posturing, tedious pseudo-spiritual babble, undeveloped charactersand total disregard for the audience. This tendency has, of course, been growing over his last four films at least and now reaches its full flowering. If I see one more charater walking moodily through high grass, dancing joyously down supermarket aisle or draping themselves in net curtains, I shall scream. Sure, the film looks great (as always with Malik) but this does not in itself make for a great or even watchable film. I spoke to several people as they left the cinema and this seemed to be a unanimous view. No more Malik for me, ever.

While I agree with much of what you said, the last part seems unfair.

This is his first bad film for me, both Tree of Life and The new World had flaws, but were still mostly good, and before that he had a flawless record.

It will take two or three more like this before one before I consider turning my back on his films.

(in reply to Itsaboy)

Post #: 11

RE: frustrating, tender, and emotionally earnest to a f... - 28/3/2013 8:45:45 AM

Qwerty Norris

Posts: 3156
Joined: 26/10/2005
From: Edinburgh

quote:

ORIGINAL: demoncleaner

quote:

ORIGINAL: Qwerty Norris

Terrence's most prolific streak has predicated the weakest entry in his career to date. There's a clear narrative regarding the immigrant experience in a foreign land and how that adopted homeland reaffirms or questions the pursuit of of love, faith or belonging. Yet this is compromised by an awkward 30 minute segment involving Affleck & McAdams which gives the film less focus (even by Malick's often meandering style) and far less ambiguity than Affleck's character should be. In a work where dialogue is also fairly minimal, it's a pity the one who does get a bit of a spiel (Olga's Italian mate) ends up being extremely irritating and hypocritical. Perhaps that hypocrisy's the point, but it annoyed more than anything else. Still a visual and lyrical treat, but the likes of Days of Heaven did a lot more in far less time.

3/5

The planets have aligned Qwerty! We appear to be in agreement, right down to the individual bits we thought worked and ones that didn't. What's next? Cats and dogs living with each other, the whole world's couped!

Clearly human sacrifice & mass hysteria!

< Message edited by Qwerty Norris -- 28/3/2013 8:50:02 AM >

_____________________________

Qwerty's Top 10 of 2013 (so far)

1. Zero Dark Thirty
2. No
3. A Hijacking
4. In The Fog
5. Good Vibrations
6. McCullin
7. Beyond the Hills
8. The Place Beyond the Pines
9. Wreck-it Ralph
10. Shell

(in reply to demoncleaner)

Post #: 12