Film Review: "To the Wonder" (2013)

INTO THE BEAUTIFUL by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Above: Olga Kurylenko stars in Mr. Malick’s movie.  Photo ©Magnolia Pictures.

A blur of colors, a woman speaking softly in French…that is how “To the Wonder” begins.  Yet while the film quickly solidifies into a sequence of crisper images, the whole piece is some sort of blur.  There are no details offered about the characters; we don’t even learn their names until the end credits.  In fact, there are only one or two actual conversations in the film and aside from that, the entire work is comprised of hushed voiceovers.  So what, then, is “To the Wonder” interested in?

            In part, ushering you into a world that is stunning beautiful and rhapsodic.  In the beginning, we watch a meeting between a man (Ben Affleck) and a woman (Olga Kurylenko, pictured above), who are falling in love.  Much of this section is set in Paris, yet could anything feel less urban?  We see them running through parks, walking up old, mountain-church steps, and finally frolicking on a wet grey beach.  This scene alone is worth the ticket price.  Dressed in black trenchcoats that make them stand out like statues against the sand, they wobble on this unsteady surface, elevated yet looking as if they might sink.  Often, we see water in the movie and it reminds you of this stunningly beautiful moment.

            And yet, “To the Wonder” is not only about the joy of companionship.  The woman moves to the man’s home (which is in some generic U.S. rural town) and almost immediately unease sets in.  There is uncertainty festering in the woman’s eyes about her decision and a banal discussion about children between her and a neighbor.  Notably, this is the first real conversation of the movie and it is hardly exhilarating.  It is as if the rhythms of everyday life have torn the characters from the realm of the divine.

            The search for poetic divinity has previously preoccupied Terrence Malick, the movie’s writer and director.  His last movie was the 2011 masterwork “The Tree of Life,” which featured a cosmic sequence about the creation of the universe and a climactic scene in which the protagonist communes with the dead on an otherworldly beach.  As a director, he seems to want to capture the way ordinary people live, yet he also seems to search for a larger than life romantic feeling.

            It is clear that the heroine of “To the Wonder” is searching for something similar.  “I know you have trouble with strong feelings,” she says to the man and in this universe, it seems that there is no greater crime.  The scenes that bring joy are the ones in which love is expressed, when the hero and heroine twirl with each other in the grass and laugh and such joy is even expressed in platonic encounters.  One of the best scenes in the movie involves a friend of the woman tossing her bag aside and telling her to be free while she’s “young and beautiful.”

            Beauty, as in “The Tree of Life,” obsesses Mr. Malick here.  He lets the film’s cinematographer, Emmauel Lubezki, feast his camera’s eye on Ms. Kurylenko’s body from nearly every angle (a character played by Rachel McAdams receives similar treatment).  Yet thrown into the mix are some odd encounters in which a priest played by Javier Bardem visits the sick and infirm.  Within such an elegantly crafted film, I found this jarring.  What’s more, I couldn’t help wondering if Mr. Malick was trying to put the marital strife of his hero and heroine in the proper context (by showing that their suffering is nothing compared to that of people whose bodies have been nearly destroyed) but I also felt that he was trying to confront the manner in which I watch his movies.  I don’t know if others feel this way (though I suspect they do) but when I see a Malick movie, I relish it both for its artistic intelligence and beauty, but also because it allows to spend a prolonged period staring at gorgeous actors.  It’s hard not to wonder if Mr. Malick feels simultaneously determined to indulge and confront this desire.

            Either way, “To the Wonder” is a great film, though certainly a painful one.  There is nothing quite so beautiful as the opening sequence in Paris.  Though the movie manages to stay in a dreamlike mode, the scenes of the characters dancing and laughing quickly become mixed with quietly mournful frustration and then, sickening domestic abuse.  “He’s killing me!” the woman shouts as they run out onto their front lawn.  Indeed, it appears that their relationship is killing whatever joy either of them has left in life.

            I have read some reviews which view this falling out as Mr. Malick’s rebuke to couples who fail to maintain a marriage.  Yet this does not seem right.  Though the hero and heroine’s courtroom marriage feels swift and stale (“Do y’all have rings?” the judge asks), the scene in which we watch another couple getting married in a more formal, celebratory ceremony feels equally uneasy.  In the midst of the joyous ceremony on the steps of the church, Mr. Lubezki trains his lens on the face of Mr. Bardem’s priest.  And unlike everyone else, he does not look happy—he looks sad and devoid of feeling, as if even this ritual cannot bring him hope for love.

            Does “To the Wonder” offer hope for a world in which true love can be found?  I don’t know.  As beautiful as the movie is, it leans so heavily on the idea of the collapse of romance that it seems designed to hinder optimism.  And yet it still ends with Ms. Kurylenko running joyfully through a field, before returning to that grey, gorgeous beach.  In the world of the film, love cannot last, but beauty?  Beauty is forever.