If there’s one thing to take from To the Wonder, it’s that Terrence Malick doesn’t listen to his critics. His last film, The Tree of Life, was generally well-received but faced complaints about its lack of plot and unique, meandering visual style, trademarks that return here. To the Wonder has been called a sequel to The Tree of Life, if only in style and theme, but unfortunately it never manages to reach the revelatory, dazzling heights of its predecessor.
Malick’s script follows a love triangle between Ben Affleck (Argo), Olga Kurylenko (Quantum of Solace) and Rachel McAdams (Midnight in Paris), foregrounding their emotions so much that commonplace personal details are irrelevant. We only find out their names once the credits roll because really, what do names matter? Malick is exploring emotion, not telling a story.
The narrative drifts between short sketches of Affleck and Kurylenko in and out of love, in moments of bliss and anger, creating an impressionistic overview of their entire relationship. It is a fearless way to make a film but often an effective one. There is a real connection with the struggles of a relationship but this technique often becomes boring, relying too often on close-ups of the two leads in a tender embrace.
Appearing in a Malick film can be a very daunting experience. For one thing, there’s the constant fear that your role will disappear in the editing suite as Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty), Rachel Weisz (The Mummy) and Michael Sheen’s (The Queen) did in this case. Oddly, Javier Bardem’s (Skyfall) role feels like it should have been cut as well, not because of a particularly poor performance but because his appearance as a priest struggling with his faith feels tacked-on.
A certain physicality is also prized over any kind of verbal dexterity, with barely any on-screen dialogue featuring in To the Wonder, alongside regular voiceovers. If Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction, Django Unchained) is the talking man’s director then Malick is his restrained opposite, with a style harking back to the silent era, where the body is king.
Kurylenko embraces this challenge in a sultry and enervated performance, at once teasing and damaged. She is a twirling dervish in love with life and its simple pleasures, an outlook that Affleck struggles to understand. His character is silent and brooding, often to the point of parody. He is meant to be emotionally distant and afraid of commitment but Affleck puts in a weak performance that makes his character intensely unlikeable and baffling to watch. Affleck appears in his recent default setting of ‘miserable bastard’ and spends most of the film looking comatose or being unsettlingly controlling with Kurylenko. He has greater chemistry and more lines with McAdams, and he clearly feels more comfortable with this more traditional style of acting.
As always with Malick, the images are the best part of the film; no one quite captures the beauty of the world like him. Alongside cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, he makes every frame a stunning achievement in its own right. Filmed mostly at the magic hour before sunset, the camera revels in the golden glow of the sun, which lurks reassuringly in the background of nearly every shot.
Malick’s style is intimate and realistic, relying on handheld shots that nevertheless manage to find something profound and astonishing in the most mundane of situations. Sadly this tactic wears a bit thin after a while, with none of the performances strong enough to support the weight of Malick’s bold visual style.
At moments, however, the film is truly triumphant, with Lubezki’s cinematography combining perfectly with Hannan Townshend’s brilliant score. The scenes where Affleck reconnects with McAdams are a highlight, the music fizzing and whirling chaotically before it crescendos into serene beauty as they fall in love all over again.
Malick’s dedication to an unconventional narrative style is admirable but in To the Wonder he fails to create the chemistry between his cast that made The Tree of Life such a success. His directing is humble and intimate but this microscopic attention to detail often means the unity of the film is sacrificed. There is a lot to love in To the Wonder but too often you have to force yourself to connect with the characters and plot. For his next few films, the newly-prolific Malick would do well to consider returning to the more traditional narratives of the features that made his name, like Badlands.
My Rating: 4 stars
Tom Bond, Books Editor, Exeposé Print
Our thanks to Exeter Picturehouse for providing Tom Bond with a press pass. You can book tickets to see To the Wonder at Picturehouse via their website.
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