REVIEW | To The Wonder (2012)

In the year 2011, there were two kinds of people on earth: those who loved The Tree of Life and those who loathed it. 

Terrence Malick offers a similar style in  To the Wonder. But this time he takes us along in his spiritual musings on love and marriage. And this time the running time is shorter (112 min) and his symbolical nature shots are contained within our planet. We are not skyrocketed wide-eyed to outer space, or to a foreign time and place, but Malick sticks to what we see with our naked eye: a gurgling stream, sunset in the fields, contrails, birds, treetops...capturing images that are closer to home. And they are not prolonged to test your endurance or humor.

In To the Wonder, there are two stories running parallel, both about deteriorating love.  A young French woman, Marina (Olga Kurylenko), whose passionate love for her husband Neil (Ben Affleck), an American she met in Europe, is slowly fading in their barren, isolated home in Oklahoma; and a Spanish priest (Javier Bardem) in America who can no longer feel love for his God and vice versa. Both burdened by their loss, Marina and the priest both struggle to understand the meaning and nature of love, while trying to recapture that lost fervent feeling. Also, we get a glimpse of Neil's childhood friend, Jane (Rachel McAdams), whom he briefly reunited with.

We are actually the women and the priest in the movie— Malick makes us experience our difficult relationship with the distant Affleck and the distant God, as they are both barely felt in the movie to further emphasize our sense of loss and rejection.

To the Wonder is pure poetry; a flow of images and whispered verses of thoughts and feelings. It's a pure emotional experience, connecting you to the characters' moods and state of mind and heart through their eyes and movements, and seeing life through their perspective. We feel sadness upon seeing a slant of sunlight across a fence; we feel hope at the fading sunset in the horizon; a sense of wonder and home in a shot of contrail; a sense of alienation in the lonely streets; love and bliss in the swaying wheat fields. The images of nature are the bridge that connect us to the characters, and we become one with them.

The only absurd part of the movie is Marina's personality. Here is a mother, an adult, whose playfulness is portrayed in a ridiculous level. We most of the time see her skipping, dancing, rolling on the floor and jumping up and down on the bed like a 6-year-old with some form of autism— which makes you wonder whether Ben Affleck's matured and masculine character has a penchant for children, or maybe Marina's hyper movements are metaphors, poetry themselves.

But in its entirety, To the Wonder is beautifully poignant, succeeding in its goal of evoking profound emotions despite the lack of dialogue. It's a heartfelt poetry, bringing to the surface painful and tragic truths about our lives and spiritual lives, and our forever struggle with the meaning of love in all its forms.

3.5 out of 5 stars

Now playing in iTunes and On Demand.