After visiting Mont Saint-Michel, Marina and Neil come to Oklahoma, where problems arise. Marina meets a priest and fellow exile, who is struggling with his vocation, while Neil renews his ties with a childhood friend, Jane.
Malick has few equals in using all the tools of cinema to convey in To the Wonder the memory of both being in and falling out of love. In the face of the film’s overwhelming visual beauty, no official religious faith is required to feel that you are witnessing paradise gained and lost.
Less ambitious than The Tree Of Life, To The Wonder remains 100 per cent pure, unadulterated Malick, an absorbing, thoughtful, moving meditation on the things that matter.
Malick falls back on his tics and tricks to distract attention from the vapidity of the material.
Underlining its big ideas in both departments, the movie wants to explore looming crises of faith, but for Malick fans it’s in serious danger of entailing one.
There is a rich excess in this movie, and the sensual profusion is not completely absorbed into its texture. Yet only a film-maker as intelligent and idealistic as Malick could have created this kind of surplus value.
Maddening after a while.
The cast is full of talented individuals but Malick seems to do everything he can to block your engagement with their lives or allow you into their story. The result is far from his finest two hours.
An impressionistic, non-linear, semi-improvised meditation on the love of nature and the nature of love. That seems to be the idea, anyway.
A rambling disappointment with wonderful moments, mostly visual.
Will Malick ever tire of his soulful child-women? How long can you linger on feet bouncing off sea-soaked mudflats before it becomes a poetic indulgence? And is it true that old directors don’t fade away; they just turn into collectors of lovely, listless images?
Arguably Terrence Malick’s most Malick-y film to date, at times To The Wonder feels like a Malick parody. Visually, it’s absolutely stunning, but the ‘story’ is abstract even by his standards.
It’s still superior to 90 per cent of contemporary US cinema and I still can’t wait for his next work (and I don’t mind if it comes in two years rather than two decades again). But I hope that the words “Terrence Malick film” don’t become a byword for a template as familiar as that of Judd Apatow or Michael Bay.
This is a slow and steady film that recognises the sadness in coming to terms with expectations not being met – by ourselves or by others.
Edinburgh Filmhouse, Edinburgh from Friday March 8, 2013, until Thursday March 14, 2013. More info: www.filmhousecinema.com
Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee from Friday March 8, 2013, until Thursday March 14, 2013. More info: www.dca.org.uk
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