[The Great Owl]

I just saw Terrence Malick's To the Wonder at a local theater. I loved the film. I was not bored at all, and I thought that the pacing of this film was quite refreshing.

I'm double-posting my rather haphazard first-impression (and non-spoiler) review from another thread, so here goes...

To the Wonder eschews conventional narrative structure to present us with a work of fluid motion, where characters alternately drift closer and farther from one another as the roving camera catches brief, but insightful glimpses at facial expressions and mannerisms. This movie, like a symphony or a ballet, uses the fluidity and sound to depict specific feelings, instead of relying on traditional dialogue and explanatory interactions. Scattered fragments of dialogue and voiceover function like musical instruments all their own.

My broad impression after this first viewing of To the Wonder is of "grace", whether it is the grace of God, the grace of nature, the gracefulness that all humans have within themselves, or the gracefulness of change, whether this change applies to a rising tide over the sand of a French coast, the manipulation of our natural world by way of man's construction, or falling in and out of love. Terrence Malick's films have always used the beauty of the wilderness surrounding human events to illustrate that mankind is simply another part of nature, but To the Wonder seems to settle on the more reassuring aspects of these observations.

I have always admired Olga Kurylenko, but her wanderings through this movie give her a cinematic presence with which I cannot imagine one not falling in love. Like Anna Karina in Band of Outsiders or Audrey Tautou in Amélie, Kurylenko dances through this movie in with emotional openness that is equally effective through elation or through forlorn sorrow. Ben Affleck plays a central role as well, but his character drifts in and out of the camera's peripheral edges as if to avoid committing fully to any given emotion. Rachel McAdams commands attention with a subtle brilliance that combines fragile beauty with rugged resilience well on its way to a hardened emotional shell. Javier Bardem, in his role as a priest suffering with an indecision about faith, lumbers through scenes with a countenance that seems just as weathered as the poverty-stricken neighborhoods that he passes through during his everyday duties. Malick's camera flows ephemerally, like the water of a tranquil river, through the lives of these characters, and I have never seen a film succeed so well at examining the emotional intimacies of relationships without judging any of the involved parties.

Well done, Terrence Malick, well done...