Revered for his surreal cinematic
storytelling, Terrence Malick is back (in just two years) with
his latest
silver-screen offering “To the Wonder”. Famous for somewhat
creating his own genre,
Malick’s latest stays true to its dramatic core and artistic
value, magnificently exploring the theme of
love, with his organic style of visual imagery. The film begins in Paris and moves
to Oklahoma with
the innate purity of love, that we all experience at the
threshold of becoming someone else’s, all the
way up till that confounding stage of diluted passion.
Malick’s emphatic story telling makes us
undergo, accept and understand the loss of love, which is the
central theme of this film. His style of
storytelling, which is profoundly detailed yet ambiguous,
does complete justice to this cinematic love
letter called “To the Wonder”, which seems less like a “film”
and more like a visual poetry.
The film opens
with flashes of landscapes rushing by a train window, as if subconsciously
preparing the audience for a journey, followed by broken
images glorifying innocence of two
people
who are falling deeply in love. It is coupled with soft and
dreamy dialogue, which seems as much a
part of the film’s narrative, as it seems to be your own
thought process. This very style of visual story
telling by Malick is where his brilliance lies. The visuals
and dialogues together make you empathise
and recollect the small details of life, finally making you
nostalgic; as if you have, at some stage of
your life, thought and felt the same things, asked the same
questions. It can be argued that
Malick prefers this style, to derive these very emotions from
its viewers. The whole film is like an
urge. Its urges the audience to think and ask more frequently
what they do ask, but seldom, to
appreciate and
understand how naturally people fall in love, how innocently they give in and
how
they give up as well, with just as much ease. The couple
takes a trip to Mont St. Michel, the island
abbey off the coast of Normandy,
symbolising it as the monument of their love, the place where
their bonds deepened as they merged into each other and felt
it’s wonder. To signify their bond,
waters at the shores of Normandy divinely become one with
pristine and concave wet sand, and
leave us feeling complete. Our set up then moves to Oklahoma,
where the landscape is starkly
different from Paris. It is sunny, projecting Maria’s happiness,
but it gradually becomes empty, to
reflect her loneliness. It is the use of Malick’s extraordinary
sense of visuals, delivered to perfection
by cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, that those very
landscapes which emanated Maria’s
exemplify his fear of commitment. She comes with her own
light and fight and gives Niel the love he
had lost with Maria. She has been very intelligently used to
inspire Niel and make him understand himself. Oklahoma also introduces us to Father Quintana (Javier Bardem), a priest in
search of god,
carrying the burden of doubting his own faith. He preaches those
in need and brings solace to
criminals through his spirituality. Malick has not given him
a specific plot, but has used him as a
poetic guide for the audience and for the characters. He asks questions that everyone has asked,
and in doing so, he bizarrely gives direction to our thought
process about Niel and Maria’s love that
is slipping away. He makes us accept that we may love with
all our heart and yet somehow loose it
all. He makes us seek what he has been seeking, yet still, he
makes us realise we can all figure it out.
The lack of passion and the deteriorating love can still be
dealt with and can, in some way or the
other, still be fixed. It is amazing, how Malick has been
able to achieve all of that without ever
directly mentioning it, just through an instrumental
character. A small fact of life, that we lose
ourselves as we divulge into the one we love has also been established to us
through a sudden
character entry. Anna (Romina
Mondello), Maria’s friend, suddenly enters and reminds her of how
free she used to be, she also reminds her
of how passionate her love for Niel was and how it has all
changed now. She suddenly comes and opens
Maria’s now closed heart. Anna does all this by not
pointing it out to her; that will never
happen in a Terrence Malick movie. She simply runs with her,
throws away her bags, yells on the streets
and tells her “Life's a dream. In dream you can't make
mistakes. In dream you can be whatever you want.” The most
intriguing fact about “To the Wonder”
however, is not it’s beautiful yet one of a kind narrative
style, it’s dreamy cinematography or its
theme about the loss of love (they have been portrayed to
perfection by the director); it is the sheer
way of portraying its actors as the characters. No where do you
see Ben Affleck as the star himself,
he has been shown just as the character and nothing more. In
fact, the beginning sequence of the
film does not even see much of his face clearly, as it has entirely
been dedicated to how mesmerised
he is by Maria. Lubezki has managed to capture to perfection,
the essence of lost souls that Malick
had penned down on paper. The visuals are abstract and
dreamlike yet strong and impactful. Nature
has played its own character in the background in Lubeski’s
shots. There is almost always a sun glare
in the film so keep the wonder alive. Almost every element
makes its way in to the story and
augments the theme. The water that settled perfectly on the
wet sand in the beginning, has
sometimes returned to become the distance between the two and
sometimes the turmoil. Jane
carries the wind in her hair and brings a new freshness to
Niel’s life . The use of light, or sometimes
the absence of it has been crucial in taking audience towards
the place where Malick wants to see
them. Another element that keeps us entwined with the film is
the melancholic music by Hanan
Townshend. It does
total justice to the wonder of the film and acts like the soul of the story, so
much
so that one may or
may not register it, but it will always have an impact. For some, “To the
Wonder”
may seem
unfulfilling and over indulgent, and they may be justified. However, this film
does not follow
any conventional rules of cinema. It is a purely cinematic endeavour to portray
to
the world the most
accepted and questioned, yet ignored truth about life; how and why do we loose
love. Malick has
portrayed this raw emotion with profound ease, as if he has tasted it himself. So
it is
only fair to say
that many may not understand his un-conventional style of filming such deep and
layered emotions
as the fundamental problems of life. Like Roger Ebert, said, “There will be
many
who find "To
the Wonder" elusive and too effervescent. They'll be dissatisfied by a
film that would
rather evoke than
supply. I understand that, and I think Terrence Malick does,
too. But here he has
attempted to reach
more deeply than that: to reach beneath the surface, and find the soul in
need.”
Terrence Malick has been often been
compared to the genius of Stanley Kubrick, and though
there are stark
differences between the two, there are even deeper similarities. Kubrick once
said,
“The screen is a magic medium. It has such power that it can retain interest
as it conveys emotions
and moods that no other art form can hope to tackle.” His words fit so effortlessly with the
celluloid
world created by
Malick’s films. Although both the directors are famous for their mystics
absence
from the media, it
is not the only common factor between the two, also not the most significant
one either. While Kubrick
had very tightly composed shots with a definitive camera movement,
always
specifically lit and shot in the precise way only a passionate photographer’s
mind could find
important,
Malick’s shots are handheld, feathery and dreamlike, always maintaining an
equilibrium
between his
wondrous romance with life and the harmony of his story. And yet they both have
the
same urge of
dealing with deep layers of emotions that are so apparent in both their films.
Their films always
raise questions so deep that they often go ignored. Not to mention their bold
styles. If Kubrick
was bold in turning a the cold war scenario in to a comedy, Malick is bold in
breaking all the conventional methods of storytelling
and the hero’s journey. They are both
opposite in their approaches, and yet fit in perfectly with each
other. Malick’s previous work “Tree
of life” shows
how Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey inspired
his thought process as a film maker.
Both the films take
huge leaps in time and plot, asking questions about humanity and evolution,
seeking the
purpose of it all and the cost we are paying for wanting more. While Kubrick is
very
graphic in his
style, Malick is more spiritual. They both have a metaphoric style of telling a
story, no
matter how
different their chosen subject matter and needless to say, their deeply layered
yet
fundamental questions
so effortlessly executed for screen. Another amazing resemblance between
the two film
maker’s passion for telling their stories through the medium of film, is their
well
justified
obsession with detailing. While Kubrick
took various NASA lessons and conducted immense technical researches
to create the precision of the Space Odyssey, Malick searched the country for that grand oak tree for “Tree of Life” that justified his magnum-opus thought behind the script. In Lolita, Kubrick used leisurely paced scenes that compelled the viewers to mentally withdraw themselves from the high of the moment and soak the entire gravity of the situation. Similarly, Malick does not let a moment pass juts by shifting a shot, but keeps it lingering long enough for the viewers to grasp the depth and importance of those emotions. Like Kubrick keeps his
cinematography character driven, whether it is through movement or lenses , Malick’s sense of
cinematography is driven by the principal emotion. Suffice it to say that Malick has been inspired by
Kubrick in deeper ways than visible and it shows brilliantly in his work.
“To the Wonder” has beautifully
made us face the often ignored reality about the loss of love
in our
lives and owing to the surreal cinematic depiction of this almost metaphysical
reality, where
characters
are mere instruments of bringing it to the front, Malick has succeeded in his
endeavour of
materialising
these abstract values with full clarity. His characters, locations, camera
movements,
music and
theme are so profoundly intertwined, that they all seem to emanate from a
bizarre Omni-
present
reality that is ever present in the film, all behaving together as an entity in
itself. However,
its
unconventional style may not fully satisfy a conventional viewer, it has its
own set of followers,
yearning to
come face to face with more such values through Malick’s vision. It is only
perfect to end
with
another quote from Roger Ebert, "A more conventional film would have assigned a
plot to
these characters and made
their motivations more clear. Malick, who is surely one of the most
romantic and spiritual of
filmmakers, appears almost naked here before his audience, a man not
able to conceal the depth
of his vision."
