NZIFF Review: ‘To The Wonder’

I saw this film less than 12 hours after coming out of Michel Gondry’s frustratingly shallow Mood Indigo and the parallels between the two films are obvious. Both deal, albeit in different ways, with the death of love.

In Malick’s film we’re treated to some gorgeous visuals as we follow a couple from the first throes of love in Paris, back to the mundane world of rural Oklahoma where the relationship falters when the differences between their two worlds become to much to overcome. She goes back to France with her daughter, leaving him to hook up with an old lover, only to let that relationship die when his French lover returns.

They marry, but nothing is right from the start and it isn’t long before the relationship withers and dies again, despite both parties desperately trying to reconnect and bring back the passion that infused their early days.

Meanwhile, a Catholic priest faces a crisis of faith and tries to find his god amongst the poorest and most downtrodden in society. His was the only character I really felt anything for. As a displaced person, walking through empty rooms and through his overly-lit, new church, his loneliness is palpable.

Malick doesn’t provide a plot for his characters. We see isolated moments and events, often without dialogue, or with the dialogue obscured behind the lush, orchestral score. The landscapes in which the characters live are gorgeously shot and become characters in their own right.

I wanted to like this film, but found it frustrating. Even in the early days of the relationship between the central characters, I found it difficult to believe they were in love. Ben Affleck’s character barely speaks and Olga Kuyernko’s is so sweet, bubbly and over the top, I found it unlikely that these two would ever have found anything in common. And as a romance, it feels passionless and doomed to failure from the start.

6/10

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