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

I do like the idea of his films being essentially plot free. They've very impressionistic, like he shot a lot of footage around a very loose idea then assembled it into a movie. I'm sort of surprised he nailed "The New World" to the specificity of history. It would have been something if he just told that story without ever acknowledging he was telling that story. He could have called it "The Garden of Eden." I wonder how "Thin Red Line" would have played if it was never clear what war was being fought, or where?

BTW, I can't think of of the names of any of his characters off hand, short of those on "The New World." Did they have names in "Tree of Life?"

The parents were only ever identified as Mr. and Mrs. O'Brien iirc. I think the main kid's name was Jack.

Some good writing on this film, but I don't wanna link bomb. Also I'd probably slant it to the "pro" side.

several friends on twitter hated it, one of which was saying that pretty much everything Kael wrote about Marienbad was relavant, which is a view I understand. He was complaining about it being "in search of" a structure and a narrative, but I thought that missed the point (not that I'm saying that if his method "didn't" work for you it's an invalid criticism).

I'm curious to see if it's really as loose and unstructured as some say. It would be a major departure I think. Thin Red Line seems the loosest so far but even then it basically has a three act thing going on.

Ebiri's point that "it's a ballet" is intriguing and even applies backwards to The New World (with the ever-rising Wagner prelude) and maybe even the Tree of Life (a sonata?). Anyway it seems clear that musical structures have influenced him a lot and even if TTW is "in search of structure" that sounds totally interesting to me. I've been wanting Malick to push his style to greater extremes, just to see what would happen, and maybe I got my wish.

Sounds on par with all of his other movies as far as embodying the parts of being human that aren't so different from being a dog or a bear or a bird.

I think, storytelling wise, it's pretty straightforward (which is why I think the Marienbad comparison is off), but he almost completely excises plot details on how they get from A to B to C, even if they do always get from A to B to C. It seems an extension of what he's been doing all along, or at least from Days of Heaven, where he'd have a whole scene of dialogue but he would just cut it down to one line to push things forward or establish character motivations.

I can't see his next film being as autobiographical as this one or ToL, so I wonder how his style might change.

ha looking up "sonata form" and I'm gonna go ahead and say Tree of Life is definitely a sonata!

Surely ToL is freer from plot than is TTRL?

I definitely think so. TTRL is almost linear--even if that "plot" appears glancingly or off to the side.

Yeah, plot is there but the camera is on the guy thinkin bout somethin else.

curious about this, what i've read makes it sound boring but reading the wrong reviews of his other stuff would make all of them sound p boring i guess. Watchin the new world tonight for first time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FR94GBgSl6U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKP1CAE1smY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwM5x7WT_5Q

i should probably wait to see this in the theater instead of doing on-demand, right?

depends on what kind of TV setup you have. i watched it on demand in HD and it was pretty good.

I would suggest seeing it in the cinema, but On Demand will probably lessen your resentment if you really hate it.

on demand is almost as pricy as a ticket, or at least it was for me.

Well a friend of mine didn't want to pay the gas money to get across LA and he went on and on to me about how glad he was that he didn't. Gorgeous film, though, and really should be seen on the big screen if possible.

Some good writing on this film, but I don't wanna link bomb.

― Gukbe, Sunday, April 14, 2013 12:01 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

why even make this post then. just link them dude u know we wanna read em

http://www.reverseshot.com/article/wonder

ty

here's the piece i quoted above:
http://wwwbillblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/we-walked-up-steps.html

So when are we getting that other one with Christian Bale and Val Kilmer?

Spinning?

would love to see the "syllabus" that Affleck jokingly speaks of in that video

can't sleep and been occupying myself by thinking more about malick's films in general. in particular a line from another "great american weirdo" (to borrow max's great phrase in another thread) C.S. Peirce: "Thought is more without us than within. It is we that are in it, rather than it in any of us."

I wonder if this turning inside-out doesn't explain the (to use an Emersonian word) "impersonality" of affect in Malick's films. the sense that on some fundamental level it doesn't really matter who's talking, and maybe not even what they are saying, so much as the thoughts/feelings the words signify. they do not belong to us so much as pass through us, happen to us--as Peirce puts it a feeling is in search of a vehicle, a mode of determination and specification--but these modes of determination are never exhaustive.

always loved that scene in The New World where the budding romance between the leads is shown as born between two people but then it transforms even the natural world--or is it vice versa? i love that you can approach it from either angle.

Still haven't seen To the Wonder, but many of the reviews make me wonder if it doesn't represent a further refinement of Malick's "late style." a further paring away of the incidentals of personality and plot in order to focus more directly on the birth and evolution of a feeling. apparently there's a van morrison-esque voiceover to the extent of "what is this love that loves us?"--or even perhaps loves through us? its remarkable the extent to which such an idea is a kind of mobius strip--much as in the Tree of Life where you are left to wonder if an individual life is the framework for the universe or the universe the framework for the individual. what's so interesting about malick is that he's such an optimist in some ways, as if the more he pulls away from the specifics of character the more invested he seems in giving the interiority of our individual lives some measure of dignity and meaning by refusing to fully naturalize our feelings or posit them as self-willed and isolated. he leaves that knot in place.

I thought what you observed manifested itself first and foremost in "Thin Red Line," as a sort of literal collective subconscious. These men are going through some terrestrial charade, shooting and killing each other, but their souls (or whatever) are operating on a different plane. There's a brief bit in that movie where even a dead Japanese soldier gets a little philosophical internal monologue. I think he did that stuff brilliantly in his last three. The reason I'm wary of seeing the new one is that it sounds like more of the same but less of what made the previous same so profound. Maybe there'll be an alternate version that intercuts all the twirling and stuff with scenes of the universe being born?

So, folks who have seen it: what's this I hear about Bardem as a faithless priest or something? How does that play into the aimless relationship snapshots?

ryan, fwiw, to the wonder struck me as quite a pessimistic film - or, the work of a romantically disillusioned optimist, at least.

oh interesting. and yeah his previous movies have that sort of "pessimist willing themselves into optimism" that, to my mind at least, is characteristic of a lot of sophisticated religious types a la kierkegaard.

so predictably I thought this was extraordinary. The mentions of Antonioni above seem really apt to me. Halfway through I thought "he's made his euro art film."

there are obviously dark moments in his previous films but nothing so extended and filled with sadness as this. There's a lot of pain in this movie and what reconciliation there is seems quieter and gentler than previous films.

Does anyone know the music playing about halfway thru during mcadams' long voice over? She was wearing a red dress. It begins with a really unusual swirling string section and continues to crescendo with brass coming in.

http://www.vulture.com/2013/04/how-terrence-malick-wrote-filmed-edited-to-the-wonder.html

this movie looks like the fucking pits. it's amazing that in the span of a decade i've gone from anticipating a new terrence malick movie with wild wonder to absolutely dreading one.

also now that "terrence malick" has been boiled down to a few visual signatures, he's being imitated everywhere... not least in the new trailer for "man of steel" of all places.

i think it's fair to say that malick's first two (maybe even three) films were inimitable.

i mean, all power to those who love this new one, and maybe it'll catch me by surprise. i hope so. but i don't expect it.

I think there's a certain quality i havent yet put my finger on to the images in this one that are rather far from the typical "perfume ad" criticism that's typically leveled at him. there's one shot of a buffalo staring head on at the camera that by no means gives off a nature as god vibe but something altogether alien, unknowable.

there are some similar shots (fleeting but they're there) in days of heaven when bill is out exploring the wheat fields. it's neat b/c they aren't really POV shots or reaction shots, the connections between shots are more elusive

I think we're so conditioned to think of nature as beautiful that it's easy to miss that a big part of his images are moving towards something more complex, a more essential strangeness. hence his obsessions with dualities and transience.

You should give this a chance! I'd love to read your reaction, anyway--good or bad. It's been buzzing around in my head quite a bit--it's got a lot of familiar Malicky elements but seems less top-down conceived than Tree and more in line with the earlier films.

i just don't know if i can handle the twirling

i was so prepared by reviews for it to be wall-to-wall twirling and mystical pantheistic nature shots i was rather surprised by it so maybe my expectations played a big role. there's not even that much twirling, like a handful of times, maybe?

there's one shot i can't get out of my head of the two leads embracing--and their already in the corner of the shot but the camera glides off of them and starts to track ever so slightly down a desolate suburban street with children's abandoned playthings lying in driveways (and of course the eerie light of dusk over it all).

most twirling is her with her daughter, but yeah, there's not as much as lazy critics like to zing it for.

There are great moments in this, but I'm probably more frustrated with it than I was on first viewing of The Tree of Life.

Bardem's role seemed cribbed from Bergman's Winter Light and similar tales, but that last montage of his ministrations worked for me.

The recurring line "Something is missing" would be an ideal headline for a pan.

Enraged is a good look on Affleck, tho, esp when he lets his mouth hang open, cavemanlike, first.

bison were awesome, it's true

Olga twirling might have made Oblivion significantly better.

I had to make sure the antic Italian chick wasn't Parker Posey showing off bilingually.

Richard Brody's "Catholicism vs Protestantism" read on it is characteristically overdetermined but at the same time it does get at something interesting about the film in its, I dunno, conflict between "duty" and "feeling."

Did love the prayer scene leading into that final (silent?) montage back in France. Felt like the movie was building to just that moment and feeling.

wish I could figure out what I find so compelling about that post-prayer montage too...it's somehow beautiful yet more distant than anything else he's done--it's like this yearning for transcendence but at the same time things remain stubbornly themselves.

it's really the only thing he's done that I'm tempted to compare to Bresson or Tarkovsky or Dreyer. (He's always been Emerson via Godard until now.)

ppl invoking Antonioni on this one which i don't quite see.

i was indeed irked by the Days of Heaven look to some of the rustling fields scenes. also a few too many 'goofy frolicking' Ben-Olga scenes.