Movie Review for "To the Wonder" (2013)

To the Wonder

Malick and the search for acceptance.

Some might say that the extension of movies that comprehend a filmography, or all work of a great artist does not cover more than just one theme, which is nothing but the great purpose, the uneasy feeling that made the person go to a specific direction on life; a concept which is now represented in various forms in the work done throughout his or her career, an affirmation that is probably true for writers, painters, musicians, and so on. For great filmmakers, the claim could not be clearer - just analyze the legacy of each director to find a common bond in all movies.

Terrence Malick and his feature To the Wonder (2012), a film that not only complements its predecessor The Tree of Life (2011), but as well comes with an idea already present in other of his early films, the ones from the 70s: the search for a place people could call their own, where one can feel at home; the search for a sense of belonging and an environment that individuals may have some control. Once in his later works he not only draws parallels, but inserts the daily life in a universal context, this theme is consolidated as the eternal search for balance and equilibrium, the rule of physical science that goes for everything that surrounds this universe, tangible and intangible - starting from the principle that everything is part of a one big thing, of the same material and the same energy that are interrelated.

It is a pretention, and also a risk. Not by chance his last two features have generated much discussion and many detractors. Both are widely supported by interpretations of biblical messages. There is an implicit conflict between science and religion. Terrence Malick, good old hermit with solid background on philosophy, strips him down completely in doubts and weaknesses, and offers his apparently sincere questions about the meaning of life. The reclusive director is graduated on Philosophy at Harvard University, and has written important studies on the work of philosophers whom had discussed the meaning of life and metaphysics, as Aristotle (author of “Metaphysics”) and Martin Heidegger, author of “Being and Time” and “Essence of the Reasons”, this last one which Malick himself translated into a bilingual version.

But, on the other hand, it is possible to find correspondences with all sorts of self-help best-selling books and quantum physics with such purpose. Often, at various times, the characters speak in "invisible forces", "signs of God", "language of nature", "manifestations of the Divine Energy", "You can be whoever you want" – typical quotations of this kind of books. Plus, the trajectories of the characters on this movie To The Wonder in particular, are widely supported by the idea of "being a foreigner in a foreign land." At one point, we get the impression that Terrence Malick eventually became an avid reader of the Brazilian writer Paul Coelho - it is a fact that many lines seems to have been taken directly from the book The Alchemist and many others by the same author. That is not necessarily derogatory: it is true that the writer had found many of his ideas about wisdom in books of the Bible (Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, Psalms, Job) and in many other writings of the cultural tradition that seek answers to the meaning of life, as I Ching, the Tao Te Ching, the Mahabharata (which contains the famous passage Bhagavad Gita), and then brought these concepts to a language that emphasize simplicity and accessibility to a wider public.

Same as Malick, citing passages of those books of the Bible in his movies, sometimes at the very first shot. The same way as Shakespeare, or as Homer (author of Iliad and Odyssey), the so-called wisdom books of the Bible represent the strongest heritage of human culture on record until this era, and they contain principles of the way societies understand life and feelings, something culturally inherited: the tradition and the reference of what we mean by existence and conflict, the archetype of life and death, and also influencing the following melodrama, tragedy, and other literary genres - something that literary theorists and critics such as Northrop Frye or Harold Bloom, or even writers as Dostoevsky always had agreed. It is also curious to mention that, once Homeric texts were based on poetry, on the poetic form, Plato, logical and rational philosopher, preached that the epic form present in Homer's poetry, telling supernatural events was just nonsense, and could not bring any kind of trustable knowledge. The world has changed little in recent millennia.

To The Wonder takes the risk and the controversy: on one hand there is this very dense familiar drama, the tension relationships of undeniable relevance, but on the other, depending on the point of view, it may seem a fastidious accumulation of teachings present in books by Fritjof Capra (author of The Tao of Physics and Turning Point), Deepak Chopra (author of Science vs Spirituality), Eckhart Tolle (author of A New World and Communion with Life), Joseph Murphy (author Cosmic Energy - The Miraculous Power of the Universe), and many others classified as self-help, quantum physics as esotericism. Religions still exist and have its power and strength, of course, but we should remember that we live in a world that is - and more than ever - skeptical, positivist, mechanistic and technocratic - due to various economic, political and scientific contingencies.

The understanding of today’s interpretation of life at the present culture is more reflected and identified with the thought of writers such as Ray Kurzweil (author of The Age of Intelligent Machines), advocating ideas as the body as the center of life (he himself takes and sells dozens of pills a day and says he will never die), that God is yet to be created, and today all knowledge ever produced can be found using a cell phone like the iPhone – concluding that, the Internet and computers came to give all the answers to all the questions that exist. Thus, in times where the valid knowledge is the scientific, and other recognizable forms of knowledge are achieved through practice and method, any form of exposure that questions life in terms of intangible nature tends to be stigmatized with adjectives such as philosophical speculations, intellectual bluffs, esotericism, mysticism, ethereal, new age, quackery, self-help, personal marketing and etc. Perhaps it true for most of the cases. This is not the case of this film. But this article discusses some topics around some Terrence Malick’s newest films, and it opens wide questions more explicitly.

Focusing strictly on the film, one fact is that one of the great characteristics of Malick filmography is precisely that his films are never restricted to a cutout - also, his features don’t have a conclusive and definitive ending. The parallel with philosophy, life and the culture is not only constant, but essential and vital. The diegetic universe is not confined to what happens on the screen. His films are fragmented, with no specific beginning nor end. There is a strange discomfort of facing a seemingly unfinished work, constantly changing. However strange it seems as audiovisual events suspended in space and time, so they stand to establish a link with the audience's structure of thinking. The proposal of the photographic and editing language, and the whole concept of mise en scène, as seen in The Tree of Life and To The Wonder, shows how everything is organized and presented by imprecise frameworks, shots and cuts based on a proximity to the very real sensorial experience. Scenes and sequences not show strictly traditional concepts such as descriptive general shots, character close-ups, static shots and reverse angle during dialogues: there is a movement that flows, moving images in the search of a framework composition, also for a meaning; the vision, the image of things floating with thoughts; the jump cuts are frequent, yet very similar shots between one cut and another, at the same scene, demonstrating a small passage of time and additionally a new time - something pointed as “wrong” on traditional editing manuals, but that emulates the blink of the eye and the sensorial life experienced off-screen for everyone in the audience. Turned out to be a certain cliché to current art films, especially in Europe. But in the case of Malick, he designs his mise en scène and combines it with the theme of his films on such a brilliant and distinctive way.

And perhaps at this department of his films the director reaches that “something else”: the Mexican director of photography Emmanuel Luzbeki again opted to shoot To The Wonder on film, on the traditional Kodak 35mm celluloid. It is interesting to figure out that the technical reasons for this choice are the same as the artistic ones: the constant need of filming with intense back light. A reminder that all happens under the sun, or under heaven (an evident mention to the Bible, especially the Book of Ecclesiastes) according to the belief of the director, as the sun symbolizing a supreme and metaphysical energy. Objects and people are lit by the sky, under the influence of celestial forces on Earth’s life, which is in the context of a much larger universe that relates to it. There is the idea that there is something greater that takes the master control. There is also the visual exuberance, so precious in his movies, but never superfluous or meaningless: it provides the distinct impression that the director believes in the manifestation of God in the colors of the sunset and the twilight, that His presence can be felt in the movement of leaves as a form of energy and the miracle that is found everywhere: the visible and the manifestation of the invisible. It has been said that in the book I Ching - The Book of Changes contains the famous quote: everything is changeable, except mutation itself, which is constant, and it demonstrates the essence of life. Just as he left his house and his country, the american Neil (Ben Affleck) found in Europe, the old continent, the desirable true love, Marina (Olga Kurylenko); just as she left France and his native land, Marina, in a new world, could finally found herself and was able to see the man who is her beloved one - perhaps only then she could truly understand what love is. In The Tree of Life there is a predominance of a masculine vision of the life cycle and family ties, although in To The Wonder there is the complement of a female point of view, that here is much more focused on the central question of love. What in the first movie was represented by the figure of a male God, severe but fair, and then following to the family father figure, represented by the character of Brad Pitt, the man who goes in search of sustenance and work, and who because of it gives up to his dreams, the rebel son who finds shelter in the love of a foster mother, the child who learns to be strong and tough, the father who loses his son, the prodigal son coming back home, and so on... The whole idea of existence, quite cyclical, inspired by the idea of "eternal return", based on a male view, which in To The Wonder, if not exactly the opposite, but something like a counterpoint and a complement. In The Tree of Life there is the force of man, the pain of being father and son, the certainty of God's presence and the brutality of nature. To The Wonder is up to the feminine love, the pain of being a woman and mother, uncertainty before the man and God's presence and redemption for the mistakes of the human being.

The male figure of Ben Affleck is, intentionally, only a vague male representation, an indecipherable man in the eyes of a woman, an uncertain presence, an apathetic worker, a highly suspected presence. In To The Wonder all male figure is the least important, is the frail figure – she wants to be able to trust and surrender to this man, but how? God made man in his own image and likeness. There is a current crisis on faith. Everyone is insecure, all in search of a sense of belonging, of fulfillment. The priest interpreted by Javier Bardem is faltering as the very existence of God, himself liable to fall into temptation - how to believing into something you cannot see and touch? The ex-husband of Marina (Olga Kurylenko) is in France because he left her behind to look for other women. The daughter of Marina does not accept Neil (Ben Affleck) as a parent, denies he as a man and father figure. If the Man is fragile and his presence is uncertain, how to trust in the love of Him? People must accept God or deny it? Accept his image and representation or deny it?

The literary tradition on which the film is based, as the Bible, Homer, the I Ching, or even if it was the case of a self-help bestseller, indicate this idea very clearly: to get to the true wisdom of life, one should depart. As Jesus went away to the desert. As set out the great heroes in their great epics. Be, at some point in life, a stranger in a foreign land. And the belief that, in the crisis, faith grows stronger, as so as the individual character. Father Quintanna (Javiem Bardem) is someone from a Hispanic origin living in Oklahoma fighting against his inner demons. Marina (Olga Kurylenko) lives in America in search of a vague and diffuse love of a husband; Neil (Ben Affleck) lives with a foreigner, and does not already know if he can love someone that is so far from himself - in many ways. At one point of the journey, all falter: daughter back to France; mother, weakened, also goes back to her homeland - and it is curious to pay attention to the places where she will first go in Paris: in the speed of subways, and the so-called "new Arc de Triumph", the Grande Arche de la Défense, located in the neighborhood La Defense, precisely the great modern buildings and skyscrapers of Paris, and is its financial center, the most Americanized area of the French capital – which means that her concept of home has been expanded.

And it is at the moment of weakness that the most fragile of creatures, man represented by Ben Affleck, meets the childhood friend, Jane, played by Rachel McAdams. At this point it is interesting to figure out how Malick wisely chooses his actors also by physical characteristics: hard to envision a more typical image of a European legitimate north-american –European-descendant than the Caucasian beauty of Rachel McAdams. Leaving the French one, that's where he will seek in vain to find balance and equilibrium. And the pain of being a woman and mother become visible - and the reason why they need support and a safe shelter.

In the midst of so many weaknesses, hesitations, uncertainties, betrayals on this truly human drama, after all humans are weak and imperfect before an ideal Creator, it can be concluded that chaos is a path to balance. There will be only freedom if there is redemption. And this is where the movie, in a mature way, talk in the name of love: a love that is free and is not necessarily governed by the will or the effort; love as a feeling that makes someone interact to this world and to each other; love as a force of nature that is inherent in everything, and that is the representation of a much larger love beyond human comprehension - that love is a gratitude feeling, a belonging sensation of being part of the life on Earth; and then, without love there is no movement and no peace nor equilibrium, so there is no life. Those ideas are spread by every single shot.

Malick cleverly makes use of symbols and its meanings, and can adopt philosophical concepts and the cultural heritage in any frame from the start to the end: the physical world, a representation of a greater reality (concept indeed based on Plato's Republic), the divine nature; man as a representation of God; the link between men and women as a representation of an alliance that exists outside of the Earth: the belief in God is strengthened by the woman when there is trust in man (as in wedding moments and promises of love), weakened when there is distrust in man as a safe shelter; the presence and the regard of a creator and omnipresent God is constantly represented by windows and stairs, symbols that reveal a search for something that is outside and higher; the eternal return, the cyclic life, represented by the constant presence of the fan blades movement, park rides, giant wheels, bullets and seesaws that appear throughout the sequences; the human need to be accepted, to deliver, to have something or someone to trust; men and women in every part of the story living their conflicts instinctively as human beings that are in the midst of insects, buffalos, horses, turtles, eagles - the dictionary of symbols next to the session would help! But the important thing is that the audience, whether interpret it rationally or not, can feel it. To The Wonder may not have the strength, consistence and the impact of The Tree of Life; may not have the aesthetic splendor and cohesion of a more traditional script as Days of Heaven (1978). May not have the same daring and adventurous spirit and of Badlands (1973). But contains many elements of these films. And it is for sure another important film that integrates the filmography of Terrence Malick, but in many ways complements and exists only in the presence of its immediate predecessor. But there is no doubt, at least so far, that there is an upward curve in the language of a filmmaker who believes in the power of the image, the capacity of film language to bring life meanings and reflections through a sensorial narrative, especially poetic - that same poetics that Homer used to explain the world, and Plato rebuffed. There is an ideal and a common thread: the reason why Malick directs his films is the same that made him become a filmmaker. And that's what matters. In a work that brings more questions than answers, more sensations than conclusions, we must assume that he is on his way. And there is no end, only paths.