TO THE WONDER is a complete blunder. I had to do that; I had to make a terrible joke in order to derive a pinch of dumb joy from the colossal boredom this film inflicted. It is not the absolute worst to be seen this year, since it at least has ambition, but Terence Malick unleashes a script with no direction, characters with no smiles, a camera with no stillness, and an editing job that is cut like a music video for the pedantic musical score. Worst yet, there is no theme or pro-nature message that is to be expected from the reclusive auteur, unless it is that Oklahoma has no beautiful mornings and everyone is a Pore Jud.
The story, which was constructed on the fly during its filming, is a worn-out paper towel of tropes and cliches that are not even suitable for a fourth-rate soap opera. Ben Affleck and Olga Kurylenko are a couple in France. They have no names given nor would it ultimately matter. Olga has a daughter. The two travel with Ben to the United States. They leave. Olga comes back. Melodramatic nonsense and then credits. Rachel McAdams fits somewhere in the picture but because she's kinda interesting, a farmer's daughter whose land is possibly falling apart, her time is heavily truncated. Also, Javier Bardem is a priest because.
None of the actors are to blame for this mess since they were given nothing and if they did, Malick decided to just expunge it and/or place more faux poetic voiceover. Affleck's number of lines can be counted on one hand and he spends the rest of the time sulking or lugging his beefcake body around. McAdams is a glorified cameo, a person designed to be included solely for the production stills. Bardem has no arc or importance to the main plotline, only to constantly talk about how God is kinda of a jerk and he should, like, help us, you know? That leaves Kurylenko to keep the film afloat through her many forced instances of running, jolting, bouncing, and collapsing. Emmanuel Lubezki's camera could be shoved up her nose and it still wouldn't make her character interesting at all beyond her batshit insanity and wet blanket demeanor. The only character I felt for was Sonic. Not the blue hedgehog but the drive-in chain restaurant that appears frequently for metaphorical senses. They both do share a deep affinity for chili dogs though, which I gladly would take over this grandiose garbage.
It is Malick's cross to bear for this giant misfire, as all of his kooky decisions led to this monstrosity. For a so-called master craftsman and all powerful man of cinema, Malick still flubs even with the most basic film traits: A crucial scene involves the destruction of a rear view mirror. The very next shot and all following shots then show the mirror magically reconstructed, eliminating any urgency of the scene left that was not already gone by his stilted story. He captures no beauty in frame, only the lingering fragments of tedium. His editing structure consists entirely of a deadly ratio of five depressing scenes for every one small show of happiness. There's no window to breath, no sense of escape.
I was marveled by Malick's TREE OF LIFE and still defend it against any nay-sayers but this follow-up returns my opinion of the director back into the red and negative. Granted, an embellished boiler-plate of romantic hysterics is more interesting to behold than a brain-destroying shoot-em-up or another comedic travesty calling itself a parody. Yet there is nothing here to celebrate and nothing to warrant a slap on the hands. A future Criterion release can't even save this DOA.
FINAL REVIEW: 1 / 5
No comments:
Post a Comment