To the Wonder -- Terrence Malick's eventually forthcoming romantic film with Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, and Javier Bardem

TIFF synopsis

“After visiting Mont Saint-Michel—once known in France as the Wonder—at the height of their love, Marina (Olga Kurylenko) and Neil (Ben Affleck) come to Oklahoma, where problems soon arise. Marina makes the acquaintance of a priest and fellow exile (Javier Bardem), who is struggling with his vocation, while Neil renews his ties with a childhood friend, Jane (Rachel McAdams). An exploration of love in its many forms.”

Plot sounds awful frankly, but with Malick I can't imagine that it's going to be much like Sweet Home Alabama.

it is highly autobiographical, like tree of life.

Premiering at Venice

The one about the love and betrayal set amidst the austin, TX music scene sounds really awful :(

He's shooting his 3rd one, Knight of Cups, right now. Not many details out, but it looks about as questionable as the other two.

what all of a sudden he wants to work like peter jackson?

getting ready to throw my Days Blu under a steamroller a la Milli Vanilli betrayal

i'm kind of suspecting this is the one where he definitely jumps the shark (at magic hour, with one arm reaching outward to feel the passing breeze)

i feel like malick's been swept up in the adulation, just wants to surround himself with peoplem who worship him

or maybe he's gonna be all "lol i'm just messing around can't believe u pointdexters took this twaddle seriously here's Affleck"

Knight of Cups!

i'm kind of suspecting this is the one where he definitely jumps the shark (at magic hour, with one arm reaching outward to feel the passing breeze)

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Friday, 27 July 2012 22:22 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wasn't some of the first discussion of this, maybe from his cinematographer, that it was more abstract, less narrative than TTOL?

tbh i think trying to gauge the success of these on their premise or casting or themes or w/e is a fool's errand - they're probably gonna be in the ballpark of straining-for-transcendence more than under-the-skin-realism, & the backdrop he pitches against that isn't a huge thing. sure "knight of cups" & rock n roller lives are in weird territory but i think his films are generally pretty separate, in effect, from that - ie 'life on the farm', 'on the run', 'at war', &c.

i feel like malick's been swept up in the adulation, just wants to surround himself with peoplem who worship him

― Hungry4Ass, Friday, 27 July 2012 22:28 (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah but ... who wouldn't cast a film like this, if your fans are super-visible actors in the archetypes you've always preferred (ie neo-richard-geres)? idk if i get a huge ego vibe from tm. who knows but his behaviour doesn't exactly scream CRAVES ADULATION

someone told me this and tree of life were part of a prresumed trilogy?!? that's bullshit, right?

is Affleck gonna recreate the universe?

malick is at least deserving of adulation rather than idk danny boyle or oliver stone

both are prequels 2 badlands if u can believe it

Badlands: The Phantom Menace

ft. charlie sheen

Charlie Sheen is BADLANDS

idk if i get a huge ego vibe from tm. who knows but his behaviour doesn't exactly scream CRAVES ADULATION

― , Blogger (schlump), Friday, July 27, 2012 6:02 PM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark

hes easily flattered by the attention of movie stars, and i know a guy who knows a guy who was one of terry's assistants on ToL and who said TM only liked the underlings who kissed his ass. *bangs gavel* case closed

isn't that what underlings are for though?

http://i.imgur.com/A2Ai2.gif

*bangs gavel* *posts gif* case closed

http://i.imgur.com/ZBhfx.jpg

who is that

idk if i get a huge ego vibe from tm. who knows but his behaviour doesn't exactly scream CRAVES ADULATION

― , Blogger (schlump), Friday, July 27, 2012 6:02 PM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark

hes easily flattered by the attention of movie stars, and i know a guy who knows a guy who was one of terry's assistants on ToL and who said TM only liked the underlings who kissed his ass. *bangs gavel* case closed

― Hungry4Ass, Friday, 27 July 2012 23:47 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha. maybe so! i just don't get what the downside to this is. it's like "man that guy only takes work from people who pay him extravagantly" or something.

haha yeah i hear you, i was half-kidding, i just found myself developing a little bit of an irrational distaste for him after hearing the stories.

wouldnt be surprised if these dont end up coming out for like forever

both are prequels 2 badlands if u can believe it

― johnny crunch, Friday, July 27, 2012 5:20 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's revealed that the christian bale character is actually the son of christian bale and natalie portman's characters in knight of cups, and that badlands actually took place in a postapocalyptic America of 2060. in the next film malick is shooting martin sheen (playing the president of the united states, now a world-governing body), rather than being sent to the electric chair, is actually sent back to the year 2012 where he has to prevent the time-travelling cyborg played by javier bardem (in priest disguise) from assassinating his own father.

dammit let me try that again:

it's revealed that the martin sheen character in badlands is actually the son of christian bale and natalie portman's characters in knight of cups, and that badlands actually took place in a postapocalyptic america of 2060. in the next film malick is shooting martin sheen (playing the president of the united states, now a world-governing body), rather than being sent to the electric chair, is actually sent back to the year 2012 where he has to prevent the time-travelling, remorseless cyborg played by javier bardem (in priest disguise, but actually the same character as the one he played in no country for old men) from assassinating his own father.

his own father, played by emilio estevez

yes forgot that point

actually it is both christian bale and emilio estevez--who are actually two halves of a split personality, one of which initiates an underground street-fighting club co-sponsored by sean penn.

Weisz, 3 other cast members reportedly edited out

http://www.deadline.com/2012/08/terrence-malick-leaves-venice-rachel-weisz-barry-pepper-michael-sheen-and-amanda-peet-on-cutting-room-floor/

nooo not barry peper

Uh..... http://www.deadline.com/2012/09/venice-ben-affleck-has-almost-no-lines-in-terrence-malicks-divisive-to-the-wonder/

Description makes me think he might have finally tipped over into cloying self-indulgence that all the h8rs complain about.

oh boy.

The film often employs circles and moving objects spinning in rounds – including ferris wheels and a rollercoaster – for symbolism. But, after the screening, people were talking about the constant twirling that Kurylenko’s character engages in. She almost never stops moving – leading folks to wonder if she wasn’t dizzy for half the shoot.

McCarthy saying same things

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/wonder-terrence-malick-venice-367295

Good god, that whole thing sounds like a trudge.

There is one type of viewer who will definitely go for the film in a big way — those with a literally unlimited appetite for watching Olga Kurylenko prance, waft, twirl and cavort through sun-flared handheld shots to exult in being carefree and happy. There is truly no end of shots like this, quite a few of which also involve various soft fabrics she can touch or pass; Rachel McAdams gets to partake in a bit of this too, although Ben Affleck does not. In fact, he doesn’t get to do much of anything except look sullen, grim and/or blank in the back of or on the edge of shots while the camera emphasizes the woman.

so is he basically making screen-savers timed to a playlist

finally classical music has it's russell mulcahy

Haha

dude's lucky he has spiffier taste in tunes than, say, Pink Floyd, or the backlash might have come a movie earlier

Guy Lodge liked it: http://www.hitfix.com/in-contention/review-to-the-wonder-is-terrence-malicks-typically-enchanted-tree-of-love

One could wonder why a director as famously indifferent to actors as Malick (Rachel Weisz's role has been given the old Adrien Brody shaft here) continues to cast such big-name stars: you might think he of all directors would be in favor of non-professional casts.

The same reason Woody Allen does: it gets your movie made.

I really like the phrase "typically enchanted"

oh yes I saw that. I actually saw him in Austin (with Ryan Gosling) at a Tinariwen concert, of all places. and apparently the episcopalian church he supposedly attends was not far from where i lived.

really hope we get a lot more movies from him. he's definitely due to have a failure or two, his style is too risky to be as consistent as he's been, but I'll happily watch them.

in Austin (with Ryan Gosling) at a Tinariwen concert

a+

Sounds like the answer to a game of Clue.

in Austin (with Ryan Gosling) at a Tinariwen concert

wkiw

i like this movie because it looks like whey you drop acid and everything looks new and beautiful.

i finally worked up the stomach to watch to the wonder, and i made it about 3/4 through before bailing. it was too depressing. maybe i'll give it a shot again some time, but i wouldn't count on it. :(

― I dunno. (amateurist), Wednesday, September 10, 2014 1:37 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's up (down?) there with blueberry nights as the most deflatingly bad film by a (once?) major director i've seen.

― I dunno. (amateurist), Wednesday, September 10, 2014 1:37 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

still wrong (re MBN too)

I'd suggest Which Way to the Front? or Inglourious Basterds

i hope you're a happy guy, morbs.

I felt totally embarrassed watching this. I felt bad for the actors having to strain so hard for profundity, or something without having a clue what they were actually supposed to be doing. It's not their fault, really, it's more like "I'm in a terrence malick flick so I have to look like this (inscrutable). Having said that, why would anyone put Ben affleck in a film in the first place? Apparently Antonio Banderas is in the new one which is like "why would you do that?" X 1million.

feeling embarrassed during a malick film (for malick, for the actors, for yourself) a key part of his aesthetic imo.

No one knew why they were the character they were or what they were supposed to be doing. I'd guess they all independently decided to do "I'm in a terrence malick film" acting.

haha. I'm a big defender of this movie but yeah "acting" as such is not much in play in this one. (saw the thin red line last weekend on tv tho and that's a very different story wrt performances)

Totally but he also ruins that, IMO, with the cameos from travolta (again, why would you do that?) and cloony which jerks you out of the denouement of the film and into the machinations of celebrity "guest appearance" bs. Totally ruins the mood. He should really only use unknown actors.

im for that. or really committed method-type actors. i thought bale and farrell were really good in the new world.

I caught the first 40 mins (for non-Ukers this was screened at 1am last night), plus I got home just b4 after seeing another/drinks with friend (but was also conscious not to have any more as I wanted to see a stretch of this in a semi-sober state, and oh yeah night buses).

I was liking it simply because he got all these ppl on it while you know it he could have got a pile of wood to act in front of the camera for all that it mattered (rly thought i was going to not be able to stand Affleck but as it turned out it was more like Affleck who?) Looked great and liked how it kept cutting abruptly from thing-to-thing. Just fragments so it never dwelt in whatever grief anyone was going through.

i am rewatching the thin red line; the weird democracy of actors involved - like the sheer number, as well as the variety in age, the overall fabric in which like a third of everyone your eyes pass across is a recognisable name - is a real part of its effect, i think, of it managing to impress the randomness of death on the audience. there's something about the temporary investment of "hey look it's woody harrelson" that inflects the economy of the deaths on-screen, like the diminishment of the currency we expect of film actors. the film's breadth & the minimalism of its characterisation feel really deliberate to me, like it's doing something very economical in service of some sweeping, dos-passos-scale portrait of what happened.

i feel so uncomplicatedly positive about to the wonder that i can't really speak about it in the same way, but i guess i think the performances operate in as distinct a mode as bresson's models, who act unrreally & kind of glacially, or as the performances in melodrama or whatever, feet away from naturalism & way closer to expressive types of cliche. & it's a dance film; ben affleck is most immediately dedicated to playing a broad, strong male in the film, his jawline framing some of the shots, whose back arches as he destroys furniture, inexpressive per his partner's commentary about how he's an inexpressive guy, & olga kurylenko is a lighter-than-light airborne presence who he's perpetually in the wake of. i also think it has like ... two hundred more distinct well-observed fresh straightforward scenes about interpersonal dynamics, & their relationship dynamics, than pretty-much any other american thing i can think of. i always think of the scene in which ben affleck & the kid are following her around the supermarket, & she's provocatively lifting her top, & he's awkward with the publicity of the exposure, & she's doing this specifically knowing the edged discomfort of his propriety.

really interesting to watch the thin red line & see some of the same settings & material explored without his refreshed camera vocabulary. it's a really beautiful film in itself, but i think he's got to something so much more direct & expressive in the last couple.

I think you are right but something about the more, say, classical or disciplined style of the thin red line and the new world put his more expressive moments into relief--there's something intense about the lyrical flights of those films specifically because of their more restrained form (for malick, let me stress). like, the meditative serenity of the ttrl, which I find so terribly moving, may have the same impact if it wasn't engaged in a dialogue or happening within a star studded "war movie."

may not have, etc.

that's, for me, why I am always obsessed with the idea of malick doing genre--I like the idea of malickian forces emerging from with a more quotidian movie experience.

yeah i think that's true, & i think maybe the thin red line's a novel & to the wonder's a poem in terms of how much terrain they cover. i am watching it occasionally finding scenery or people uncaressed; i don't think this is a bad thing but it's very different from the kind of relentless probing camera, & feels just slightly stiffer by virtue of being generally familiar territory. the longueurs & the sort of peripatetic drift of ttrl is terrible moving.

ps true detective season 3 ryan gosling & richard gere dir. terrence malick is so never gonna happen

breaks my heart!

also worth noting perhaps that the way war in characterized in that film--as a kind of relentless and brutalizing churn, a chewing up of the earth--only appears in passing in something like To the Wonder, which seems to have an idea of the earth as something being slowly poisoned and left for dead. and I think that difference alone gives the the lie to those that take the "environment" to be some stable presence in his movies and not a changing character in its own right.

re: longueurs, literally my favorite scene in the ttrl is when Witt finds Thomas Jane just chilling out all by himself on the top of a hill and they talk about how peaceful it is up there--like it's the alternative universe hill that they struggled so hard to conquer in the earlier part of the movie.

more and more I think a big part of this movie is about the paradox of sacrament--and that's an especially apt thing for a Malick movie, themselves so intent on the production of feeling through the "techne" (forgive the term) of cinema, to be about.

I really like how he reads it through one angle as the tribulations of a romantic relationship and through the other as an explicitly religious commitment that's gone "cold," so to speak. In so many other Malick films, even the relative darkness of circumstance that surrounds TTRL, there's an effusiveness that irresistibly bursts through, but here it's clear he's working for it. the movie is in so many ways about achieving a relationship of feeling with others and the world, a relationship that's not always present for the individual characters in earlier films but does seem taken for granted by the film as a whole. and there's something beautiful about the comparison of a failing relationship and a crisis of faith--and how both are organized around desiring infinity, or projecting a desire into a void. either those final moments are impossibly generous (like the end of The New World, say) and thus brought into life by a private prayer or they simpy represent a quiet expectation. either way it's devastating.

also im borderline angry about some of the critical dismissals of this movie.

― ryan, Tuesday, April 30, 2013 3:39 PM (3 years ago)

this is such a great post

hey thanks!

i need to watch KOC again since i think a lot of those concerns may carry over.

projecting a desire into a void

;_;

k3v otm

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