The wonder, the wonder...

Not wishing to be accused of a feeble knowledge of the dictionary, I have changed tack slightly on my titles…for starters, I wouldn’t wish to offend Big Dave as he is a religious man and I do bemoan on, well, a daily basis the downfall of the language of this “Perfidious Albion” or as they call it parliamentary circles “Bollocks Britain”...I digress.

This week, in an attempt to embrace the potential “good stuff” out there post awards season madness, I went to see Malick’s ‘To The Wonder’. It was an intimate affair, just me and another lady of a certain age who, thank goodness, had the good grace not to munch loudly on popcorn as some other raj bell-end did during the torture scenes of ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ (ridic). I was wary of this film, as I had been before I saw 2011’s ‘The Tree of Life’ but as with the former, I was very impressed with the results. I was also greatly relieved that in ‘To The Wonder’ Malick had not felt it necessary to include some CGI dinosaurs featured in ‘The Tree of Life’, the presence of which still continues to puzzle me.

Ever since I read about it at its premiere at Cannes last year, I had been itching to see this film. ‘The Tree of Life’ is utterly compelling with images which barely seem to fit the cinema screen. The approach is unusual and these two films do not fall in any way into conventional storytelling as the images intertwine with stories and concepts which are far larger than the medium itself. As a cinematic experience in its purest form, these films are out of this world.

‘To the wonder’ is a love story of sorts. The opening sees the protagonists Neil and Marina, played by Ben Affleck and Olga Kurylenko, in the first throes of love between the locations of Paris and Mont St Michel. The scenes filmed at Mont St Michel are breath-taking as Malick slowly winds up to the top of the mountain, observing the interaction between the characters and they realise the extent of their feelings for one another. These scenes are accompanied by the sound of Mahler’s 9^th symphony which blends perfectly with the enormity of the images.

The protagonists then move to America, the images of which present a stark contrast to the airy, grey and beautiful scenes of France. Everything is new, everything is clean. The images are accompanied by Marina’s interior monologue, delivered in French, which questions the nature of love and relationships. (I know - I’m really selling this to you…) 

At their transfer to America, there is rupture in the relationship between Marina and Neil. He works in construction and is unfazed by the rigid and rather dull nature of his surroundings whereas Marina and her young daughter seem out of place in such surroundings. Her visa runs out and they return to France. During her absence, Neil rekindles a romantic relationship with a former girlfriend, Jane, played by Rachel McAdams. She is a melancholic figure, lost as she wonders through never-ending fields of corn, trapped by the loss of her young child and ready to commit herself to her relationship with Neil. He, however, is unable to maintain the relationship and when Marina, who has been unable to cope without him in Paris, returns to America, they get married.  

The two women are fascinating subjects; Jane is represented by the wholesome images of farms, animals and never-ending field s of corn whereas Marina could be Mont Saint Michel. She is odd, she doesn't fit into the clean, sterile and staid atmosphere of the new house devoid of furnishings and the never-ending supermarket. The same can certainly be said of Father Quintana, the local parish priest played by Javier Bardem. He constantly questions his actions, whether he has pursued the right path in becoming a priest and, essentially, he asks: where is God? He, like Marina, poses his questions through an internal monologue delivered in Spanish and has little contact with the other protagonists except as a counsel and as the head of the church.

This is a powerful piece which, I fully appreciate, will not be to everyone’s liking. Yet, I would recommend it to those of you who enjoy being completely transported by the medium of cinema. It will leave you enriched with questions but gently calmed by the pace and astounded by the beauty of the images.

Next time, I will deeply analyse the farting scene in ‘Blazing Saddles’ in order to bring myself back down to earth…