To the Wonder (2012) Reviews

• Whispers and pretty images DO NOT make a movie!!!

  levyhc2013-05-05

  This is a great movie ..... FOR SELLING TVS!!! I cannot find any other good use for this excuse of a movie. I'm not kidding, in a point of the film, they run out of landscapes footages and they throw some TURTLES at us! SERIOUSLY?!?! I mean, what does the poor turtle has to do with anything? I just hope the turtle's payment was at least as big as Ben's, because they get about the same number of lines. Or should I say whispers. That's another thing in this movie that is incredibly annoying: there are no dialogues! Only some random whisperings. The Tree of Life was bad, but To the Wonder takes it to a whole new level of badness! Summary: "I love you." (silence) "Let's get married." (more silence) "I need a visa." (Guess what? More silence) Then she leaves. There is also a random priest going through some middle age crisis. And they make it goes for 2 hours by adding a bunch of Nat Geo footages. Just a final comment: PLEASE, IF YOU DIDN'T GET THE MOVIE, IT DOES NOT MEAN IT IS A GOOD OR A CULT MOVIE! I don't know how anyone can give this movie a 10. It's like "I've no idea what the movie was about, so it must have been good." or "if I say I didn't get it, people will think I dumb." And I don't respect who give it a 5 by saying "the story deserves a 0, but it is so pretty that I will give it a 5". They are saying that no matter what you throw at then, if it is mixed with some 'LED TVs add material', it deserves at least 5.

• To the Wonder is an empty shell

  artalways2012-09-25

  Attending the official screening at the 'Sala Grande' at the Venice film festival. The applause for the attending actors finally stops and I find myself waiting with some excitement for a film created by one of the most praised directors of the moment, lining up some great names like Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Javier Bardem and Olga Kurylenko. I was also expecting another great actress to appear on the screen, Rachel Weisz. I would soon find out that she was being cut out, and some more were. It is not the first time this happens. Malick has a notable history of cutting actors out of his films, which is of course his good right. After a typical romantic scene in Paris, more resembling a travel advert then anything else, I start to get nervous. Why? Because the romantic blah-blah doesn't seem to stop. An overhead voice speaking french doesn't make a movie artistic. Loosely filmed scenes in corn fields are not per definition beautiful. Kurylenko, in the role of Marina, comes to the hometown of Neil (Affleck), some nowhere ville in Oklahoma where they continue their fairytale romance. Kurylenko is constantly doing little dances and pirouettes on the street, or where-ever she is located. Giggling, singing, hopping on the bed, and looking over her shoulder while laughing towards the camera. That kind of sums it up, since Affleck hardly speaks a word. He is just the typical guy and she is just the typical so called-artistic-french-loving-and-beautiful girl. After she and her daughter return to Paris, he has a identical affair with his hometown sweetheart (McAdams), as if super attractive women are just available everywhere. Then Kurylenko returns, because she needs a Greencard. Explained in just one very meaningful phrase "Forgive me" they have a fight. Also very typical (but yes, finally some action!). Of course some kind of vase is shattered and its all tears and gestures. Then suddenly Javier Bardem appears as a priest seeking spiritual fulfillment in a church. These scenes seem detached from the rest of the story, although the same church is visited by other characters. Some cleaning personnel and people who are 'worn down by life' are also given some screen time, placed randomly into the movie (in high contrast to the blazing beauty of the main characters). The religious undertone becomes stronger and stronger towards the end of the movie, making it all too clear that love and religion are one and the same. And that all of the Hallmark-inspired beauty seen before must be powered by the divine. Enforcing religion onto an audience reminds me of brainwashing, and it is something I cannot appreciate. Showing religion in a movie is no problem; since it is a part of most people's lives, but trying to emotionally convey someone to a certain religion, doesn't matter which one, should be a priest's job not a film director's. I must say I admire the wish to look upon cinema in new ways, and I can see very clearly what the idea was for making this movie: Malick tries to tell a story by not showing the key moments, conversations or explanations: he shows the in-between. The silent moments, 'life'. This is how the movie fails: there doesn't seem to anything in-between. The emotions seem empty, love seems superficial, religion is fake. The thing is, I applaud to art cinema, I am very much fond of romantic stories, I love it when a filmmaker pays attention to cinematography. Maybe all of this made me more disappointed in "To The Wonder" then anyone else. After it was finished some applause but also loud booing was heard from the audience. I sure wasn't the only one frustrated and appalled by this movie.

• Wonderful visuals don't make a good story

  themissingpatient2013-05-07

  TO THE WONDER is the new film from master writer/director Terrence Malick. The story begins with Ben Affleck's character, Neil, in Paris where he falls in-love with a single mother named Marina, played by the beautiful Olga Kurylenko. Neil brings his new love and her daughter, Tatiana, back home with him to the United States. When Marina's visa expires and Affleck's character is reluctant to marry her, Marina and her daughter return to Paris. Neil begins spending his time with a childhood friend, Jane, played by Rachel McAdams. However Jane is a woman of great faith, a faith that Neil does not share. Back in Paris, Tatiana leaves to go live with her father and Marina becomes depressed, longing to return to the US to try to work things out with Neil. It is at this point that the story falls apart. It's impossible not to compare TO THE WONDER to THE TREE OF LIFE simply because the two films are shot in the exact same style. Beautiful shots and gorgeous cinematography accompanied by a classical score and poetic voice-overs from the characters. The Tree of Life was and is not only a masterpiece, but one of the greatest films to ever be made. I thought maybe To The Wonder was a little too soon for another Malick epic but I do not believe that is the case as far as why this film fails. The two characters I felt for and wanted to see more of was Javier Bardem's Father Quintana and Rachel McAdams' Jane. Here we have a priest struggling in his relationship with God and a woman who has suffered through the grief and loss of a child, yet has found a way to continue living in harmony with great faith. These highly interesting characters are under-used as the film focuses more on Neil and Marina, who by the end of the film, we begin to hate. The actors do not help the film tell it's story, it almost seems like they walked on-set without a script and improvised their parts. In Tree Of Life we had Jessica Chastain, Sean Penn and Brad Pitt giving the performances of a lifetime, not through dialogue, but simply through facial expression, movement and body language. There wasn't a need for scenes of dialogue, the story was understood. With To The Wonder, I was craving a scene of dialogue towards the end. I didn't want to believe Affleck and Kurylenko's characters were as shallow and selfish as they seemed, I wanted and felt I deserved to know more about them and why they continued to struggle. Why are they so frustrated and angry? No matter how abstract or convoluted a film is, I've never had an issue coming to some sort of an understanding and usually, the more a film leaves open for me to interpret myself, the more I respect the film. However, To The Wonder leaves us with two characters we no longer have any reason to care for and the film gives us no way to understand or relate to them in the end.

• Unbearable

  john_in_oz2013-02-23

  I have always wondered about people who give one star reviews. Is it for the extra attention? Is it a joke? Can a movie really deserve one star? Well finally I have seen a movie which simply does not permit me to give it any more than one star. A movie that has prompted me to create an IMDb account and write this review so that other cinema goers do not have to share the mind numbing agony of my experience. My woes stem from the fact that "To the Wonder" seems to be an experiment into expressing nothing but the emotions of love and loss. Initially this seems a noble cause, but it comes at the expense of plot, dialogue and even character development. So if you sit through the first 30 minutes thinking "I wonder if anything is going to happen?", sadly the answer is "no". There seems to be the assumption that an audience can share in the on screen emotion without ever being given access to the motivations and events which led to them. It is like watching The English Patient and trying to understand Ralph Fiennes' emotional turmoil without being shown the flashbacks of his life before hospital. So without any narrative or dialogue, the poor actors are left trying to convey their emotions by looking gloomy (as Ben Affleck does for the entire movie) or by performing pirouettes and looking wistfully into glinting autumn sunshine (for Olga Kurylenko). If you are a huge fan of the back of Ben Affleck's head, you'll love this movie. For me the only enjoyment was in the irony that a film about emotion should be so emotionally uninvolving. That and the joy of seeing the end credits finally roll, upon which I punched the air and shouted "Yes!" This is something I have never felt the need to do before in a cinema, and it certainly surprised my wife (who looked mortified). I didn't care. This film marked a new found level of tedium, so extreme that it should probably be reserved for Guantanamo Bay. One star tedium? You bet.

• Beautiful cinematography combined with pretentious nonsense

  lornloxor2013-07-14

  This movie is closest to a silent film that I've ever seen. The "plot" is really simple. Neil (Ben Affleck) and Marina (Olga Kurylenko) fall for each other in Paris and then they move to Oklahoma where Neil works. You really couldn't have made a more obvious comparison between the old world with Paris and the new world with Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Marina doesn't really enjoy it there and they grow apart. Neil rekindles his love with an old crush, Jane (Rachel McAdams). It doesn't work out and Neil and Marina get together again. The characters also meet with a priest (Javier Bardem) who is having a crisis of faith. Ben Affleck looks like he's been hit on the head with a shovel for most of the movie. He just walks around dazed, not really there. Olga Kurylenko just spins and runs in fields, streets and parks giggling and smiling at the same time with Affleck's character following her nearby. They also stare at each other a lot, wide-eyed and wistful. I mean for real, there's only a certain amount of this stuff that I can take seriously. Javier Bardem is the cliché priest, trying to speak to God through inane ruminations on faith. Feeling he's there but seeing nothing, 'Show us how to seek you' and so on. This isn't interesting in the slightest. Rachel McAdams, well she's there for a bit and then she's gone again. The overly poetic and pretentious voice-overs are like a self-parody of Malick's style with platitudes like 'What is this love that loves us' going on and on. Affleck and Kurylenko don't even look like people who could be saying those things. During the whole movie I just thought they'd fit perfectly to a high class perfume advertisement. You might believe they'd speak like they do in the voice-overs if there was any proper characterization. The motivations and histories of these characters are unclear. There's no real dialogue between the characters and it was impossible for me to care what happens to any of them. The actors don't really have much to do except silently look at each other. The film is beautiful visually but it ultimately feels empty. Many of the shots seem completely unrelated to anything. Rainwater falling in a drain, a shot of a puddle, a street light in the dark, an run-down house, a row of houses in some random neighborhood, a classical pot during the sunset. What is the point of all these shots? Maybe they're shot with skill but they're utterly pointless. Malick's Thin Red Line is a masterpiece and it actually used these kind of beautiful shots to contrast the destructiveness of man with how nature simply goes on anyway despite all of this and it was brilliant and quite profound. The line between profound and pretentious can be extremely thin though and in To The Wonder Malick went way over it to pretentious-land. What really worries me now is that after seeing this pretentious nonsense I can't go back to the Thin Red Line and enjoy it as much as I have because I'll keep thinking about this movie. What's also bugging me is the constant use of magic hour shots. Sure it's beautiful but to fill the entire movie with them? Again, it's like someone who doesn't like Malick's filming style went out of his way to parody him. Cinematography itself isn't enough, it should serve a compelling story. I wasn't just looking for beautiful images, I was looking for a movie.