As anyone who reads this blog knows, I am not exactly one for “image” films with no dialog. Eric Rohmer is my idea of film artistry – To The Wonder is the exact opposite of Eric Rohmer. Nevertheless, I have to admit I liked this much maligned film. And the final image of the film shocked me so much, I choked up and cried.

I have no idea what Terrence Malick thinks his film is about, but I saw To the Wonder as a very interesting statement on what it actually means to love – not merely platitudes like love is hard work and requires selflessness, but the deeper sense that each person’s life presents them with their opportunity to love, an opportunity which may or may not fit the neurotic delusions of their restless mind, and an opportunity they must accept if they are to be whole. This message is layered on a little heavy through the Javier Bardem character of the priest, but I don’t really see it as an exclusively Christian idea. People’s opportunity to love is basically found in whatever is immediately surrounding them, opportunities that are seldom acted on for a wide variety of reasons.

The two leads – the impossibly beautiful Olga Kurylenko and ruggedly handsome, salt-of-the-earth man’s-man Ben Affleck – represent each other’s neurotic delusion, not so much literally (although there is that) as figuratively and allegorically. They each have someone right in front of them in their lives who was their chance to love. For Affleck, it’s mundane childhood sweetheart Rachel McAdams, a absolutely perfect piece of visual casting as a poor man’s Olga Kurylenko. For Kurylenko, it’s her young daughter from a prior marriage that she is ashamed of. Both are tossed aside rather sadly, as the two eventually and tragically return to chasing their respective delusions.

What was impressed me greatly is how steady and sure the film’s artistry remained all throughout, painting a quite striking picture of the psycho-emotional nature of most peoples’ lives. Everything I have described is transmitted through images, and what little dialog and narration exists is itself a kind of abstract, vaguely poetic reinforcement of the various visual ideas. So Kurylenko’s narration and behavior is almost an inane parody of philosophical and artistic approaches to love, while McAdams’ is painfully direct, real, and human. The film walks an amazing line, visually.  The sequences of images are not only continuously beguiling, but they weave a lovely tapestry of meaning all through the film. Sometimes they send your mind reeling – I think the scene with Affleck and McAdams in the middle of the bison herd is an astonishingly effective visual representation of the nature of their love, or rather potential love. Many of the smaller images only struck me well after the movie was over, as I noticed some thread of continuity I had missed at the time – it’s pointless to try to summarize them, there were so many. The images even sort of function as a kind of elementary narration – as long as you are willing to sit their constantly interpreting what you are seeing.

As I thought about this film afterward, one thing that struck me was how starkly it contrasts to the excessively literal modern indie movement, which to a certain extent attempts to explore similar territory, but always gets lost in a thick, post-modern fog. By adopting a totally visual and quasi-poetic approach, Malik sidesteps the problems of trying to represent these ideas in dialog. However, it is possible, although more difficult, to approach via dialog, and to me the results are always more impressive. Without taking the time here to elaborate, I invite you to compare To The Wonder to Eric Rohmer’s masterpiece L’Amour l’après-midi (1972,) which covers somewhat similar philosophical territory concerning love, but does it through dialog, and is in my mind one of the greatest films of all time.

Still, I don’t mean for this comparison to take anything away from To The Wonder. The critics have this film quite wrong. It’s a lovely, thought-provoking, and somewhat haunting film that is definitely worth seeing, if the film’s ideas intrigue you and you don’t mind doing a bit of interpretive labor.