Starring: Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko, Javier Bardem, Rachel McAdams
Written and Directed by: Terrence Malick
I would love to see what Terrence Malick’s full version of this film is. I’ve read how numerous actors were cut from the final film. Rachel Weisz, Jessica Chastain, Michael Shannon, and Michael Sheen were among them. This film also has the dubious honor of being the last film Roger Ebert reviewed. What a shame. Ebert’s illustrious film viewing career ended with an incomplete Malick piece.
Semi-autobiographical, like Tree Of Life, To The Wonder is told almost entirely in poetic narration. Some of it, most of it really, isn’t in English. It’s an “avante-garde” piece, but obviously on the more cinematic side of things. It refuses to allow convention to play a factor in the storytelling, and rather lets the camera and the narration do the work. I would say the actors do adequate work, but there aren’t really actors here. There are characters on a canvas. Without sufficient dialogue, the actors are nothing more than placeholders for the imagery that exists only in Malick’s mind. This is his story after all, it is semi-autobiographical.
My problem is that it struggles with coherency. You always feel like things are missing, jumping around, etc. I can feel the missing scenes with the aforementioned actors, even though I don’t know what was in them. This feels like a rough cut of a film not yet ready for viewing, yet it somehow is being presented as a final piece. Unlike Tree Of Life, which also saw actors on the cutting room floor, this film feels lacking. Affleck’s character never seems fully realized. He’s an asshole in narration long before he’s even an asshole on the screen. It’s disappointing, because this was a beautiful story to be told.
Malick is notorious for shooting more footage than he needs, and leaving entire roles on the cutting room floor. This time, it didn’t work. This time, it doesn’t feel like a complete work or a finished product. It feels almost naughty watching a “work in progress”, like I’m seeing something I shouldn’t be seeing. I’m even more disappointed because it appears I’ll never see the finished work. It’s like eating a decent appetizer only to be told there is no meal. That was it. Chips and salsa was my main course? I don’t understand! Well, neither do I.
FINAL GRADE: C+
