This one reminds me of an old Mystery Science Theater 3000 joke that I’d like to dust off: “Seems
like they forgot to have things happen in this movie.” So let’s take a quick look.
Story? Uhh, a guy
(Ben Affleck (The Voyage of the Mimi))
invites his French girlfriend (Olga Kurylenko (Quantum of Solace))to live with him in Oklahoma…and…they’re in love
but they fight a bunch…and then she goes away for a while…and then the guy
falls in love with another woman (Rachel McAdams (The Hot Chick))…but they break up and the French girlfriend comes
back into the picture…there’s also this priest (Javier Bardem (Collateral)) who’s losing his faith in
God and Jesus and religion ‘n’ shit…and…uhh…whatever.
Acting? It’s fine I
guess. Everyone goes through a range of
emotions and they all pull it off well enough.
Dialogue? There’s
very little. There’s more whisper
talking narration about love and all that than dialogue. It’s almost a silent movie the way this is
presented.
Cinematography and production? It’s your usual Malick type deal with lots of
nature, people staring, walking and playing with each other, etc. There’s no real form or structure to any of
it. And of course it’s beautifully shot
and edited together with a nice score.
Here’s where I’m coming from in case you guys don’t know how
I feel about Terrence Malick. Generally
speaking I love his films. They’re some
of the most stunning and challenging pictures I’ve ever seen both in terms of
story and production. The New World is my favorite of his
(although I have a feeling that Voyage of
Time could replace that) and also one my favorite films of all time. I’m not afraid to admit that I have a huge
goddamn crush on his filmmaking style.
So to an extent I’m gonna like pretty much anything that
Malick comes out with. The way he makes
movies just does it for me. This is no
exception. I really like the way parts
of this thing are put together. However,
this one is unfortunately his worst film so far. It’s aimless.
We’re shown all of these images of this couple loving each other, then
hating each other, then loving each other and so on but there isn’t a lot of
substance to it. Even though I spent
almost two hours with these characters I feel like I don’t know them. Is Ben Affleck really an asshole or is it all
Olga? She’s conflicted about her love
for Ben but is she also kinda crazy? The
thing is we learn so little about these characters that you could project almost
anything you want onto them. I don’t
think that’s supposed to be the idea. It
seems like they’re supposed to be complex people but it doesn’t come off that
way. Everything about the story and the
characters just isn’t interesting.
It’s really a shame that this is such a weak effort. Not even Malick’s incredible filmmaking could
save this one. Story-wise there’s so
little to grab onto and get engaged in. Malick
goes too deep with his own style and ends up folding in on himself. The Tree
of Life started down that road but didn’t fully commit. It’s weird but that picture seems a little
more grounded. To the Wonder floats off into the ether. Questions that Malick may or may not be
posing about love and religion get lost in the meandering.
If you like abstract and arty as fuck movies then you’ll
probably dig this. If you like Malick
you also might dig this. But if you felt
that The Tree of Life was pushing your
boundaries then this will take you over the edge. I still love the man’s style, which means
that after all the shit talk I laid down there’s a part of me that kinda likes
this film a bit. Is it possible to have
too much of a good thing? I dunno. But it sure is possible to have too much
Malick. Sorry Terry, you’re the fuckin’
man but I just wasn’t all that into this one.
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