To The Wonder

To The Wonder, the current offering of Terence Malick, like his previous Tree of Life,is not a movie in the normal sense, it is a visual meditation, it is really a prayer, or rather three prayers: that of the exquisite and exuberant female protagonist, that of the saintly but desolate priest, and that of the admiring camera, or director, or viewer. As with the mother in Tree of Life, the director's eye is unabashedly masculine in his adoration of the feminine lead (Olga Kurylenko)...an adoration that never objectives the Beloved, but maintains a sense of awe and wonder, and the excruciating distance of reverence. With a minimum of plot and dialogue, the camera wants mostly to contemplate and marvel at the feminine loveliness and preciousness of the feminine lead in the dance movements of her form and the expressions of her face: wonder, grief, puzzlement, sadness. The second prayer is that of the priest, played poignantly by Javier Bardem, who is gently showing God's love to the most unlovely even as he is in anguish at the absence of God. He is a fresh expression of the dark night of St. John of the Cross, of the (Diary of a) Country Priest, of Mother Teresa and the young Karol Woytija. A summary of the movie explains it as the "story of a man divided by the loves of two women." This is not accurate. The male lead, Ben Afflek, is actually marginal to the agony and ecstasy of the real protagonists: he is a foil for Kurylenko, and is himself unbearably monotonous in his wordless, emotionally repressed, unexplained melancholy. He seems to be an expression of the grief of the director/viewer at the reality that the Desired One, in all her loveliness, tenderness, and preciousness, is finally elusive and out of reach. Despite an occasional smile, he is the morose male, trapped in the Oedipal passage, deeply longing for the maternal, the Eternal Feminine. As others have done with Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, and Penelope Cruz, this male director mostly wants to gaze at, marvel at, and long for Feminine Beauty. The melancholy of Affleck and the dreaminess of Kurylenko is balanced by the deeper spiritual emptiness and goodness of the Bardem priest. His is surely one of the finest portrayals of the Catholic priesthood available in movies. A key scene has her confessing to him and then receiving communion. In an erroneous detail that is highly significant for the Catholic, she receives Holy Communion, outside of the liturgy, under both species. This, of course, could never happen as the precious blood is not reserved. But far more disturbing is that, shortly after this reconciliation, she inexplicably commits an act of infidelity. This scene is possibly the most realistic, terrifying portrayal of adultery ever: deeply sad and alienating, bereft even of glamour, there is nevertheless the allure of evil, as she freely and consciously desecrates her own preciousness and her spousal love. Perhaps never on the screen has the allure, the sadness, and the power of sin been unveiled. This is Elvira Madigan meets Diary of a Country Priest, it is Nietzche meets John of the Cross (by way of Heideggar whom Malick studied). It is not a movie to entertain or divert; it is a piece of art that can only lead the viewer into prayer: prayer of desperation for our present-but-absent God, prayer of frustration and yet gratitude for the excruciating splendor of sexual love, prayer of praise for that "love that loves us."