For A.B and T.G.
What is this love that loves us?
That comes from Nowhere
From all around.
The sky
You Cloud, You love me too. (Monologue
from Marina)
There is a jazz ballad called Body And
Soul which was interpreted by so much great musicians. This comes to
my mind when I think about the last films by Terrence Malick. Sure, last but not least all these films include philosophical, spiritual
and even religious ideas. The fact the films are blamed by many
so-called critics as esoteric and even as kitsch either amuses me or
makes me very angry. At least in the Western Cinema of the last
decades, I can´t remember any other films which are as much in love with the physical perceptible world. The only “close relative” to Terrence Malick from the film countries of the West seems to me the
French master Jean Renoir and especially his films Une Partie de
Campagne and The River.
One of the three films from the French
Series Les Cinéastes de Notre Temps which are dedicated to Jean
Renoir and made by Jacques Rivette is a recording of a conversation
between Renoir and the French actor Michel Simon. I do not remember
exactly if Renoir has cited or has expressed his own thoughts when he
said: “The soul is not in the heart and not in the head but
directly under the skin.” I can´t imagine any better sentence to
describe my fascination for the films by Terrence Malick.
The film begins with two lovers, the
American Neil and the Ukrainian-French Marina. They travel by train
through Europe and they are visiting different places in Europe. Even
more than in The New World the distinctive fluid camera movements by
Emmanuel Lubezki seem like an endless dance which will be mostly
answered by Marina. That has the same eloquence like we know from the
films by Max Ophüls and Kenji Mizoguchi but on the other hand it is
impossible to reduce it just on its artistry. It seems to be filmed like it
was once felt.
At the beginning the bodies of the
lovers appear weightless. As the film proceeds the gravitation will
reconquer the bodies of the lovers. An excursion to the Mont St.
Michel in the Normandie and later a walk at the beach during low
tide and close to the high tide. The first moments of the film appear
like memories, moments already taken out of time. The couple moves
pending and gliding through this space and this scene has almost a
dreamlike quality, a dream which will clear away as the film
proceeds. They will remember this experience and they will try to
hold this dream which is already a lost dream.
Just a few moments later, there is a
scene which belongs to the most eloquent and at the same time to the
most moving scenes in a film by Terrence Malick. In a Park in Paris, Neil asks Marina
if she and her 10 years old daughter will come with him to America.
This moment is literally very moving, the handheld camera dances to
the whole scene and especially Olga Kurylenko is dancing like a
female dervish. In this park we see something like a mini version of
the Statue Of Liberty. In this scene the euphory of love, the
promise of fortune in the far away America in its formal playfulness
an enchanting cinematic moment. With a shot of the sea, the film leads
over to the house in America where Neil lives. This a moment of
dreamlike beauty which justifies already after a few minutes the
“wonder” in the title of the film.
Especially this promise will be
disappointed later. We see enchanting American landscapes filmed in a
light which I have never seen in cinema before and since To The
Wonder. But we see also abased landscapes. The estate of Neils house
is surrounded by a high fence. Neil the geologists takes samples from
the soil in this neighbourhood and declares this soil as contaminated
with poisonous stuff which endangers the life of people and animals.
While gradually the happiness of the
couple breaks through betrayal and ignorance the film offers more and
more insights to the shady sides of America. Traces of poverty,
loneliness and despair are interwoven in the film which tells at the
same time about a love relationship which is becoming more and more
difficult. We see drug addicted and dangerous criminals in a jail. A
Spanish priest who is obviously in a crisis of faith offers the
prisoners the sacrament. Behind the walls of this maximum security
prison, there is no entrance for the wonderful light. These ugly
sides of the civilization sometimes collide with moments of the probably most beautiful light I can remember.
Malick´s cinema is a cinema of
intensities and these intensities can vary from euphoria to an
absolute despair. Some of these intensities we can already see in
Olga Kurylenko´s face. To talk about the human faces in Malick´s
films (which remind me always in the films of the Bengali master
Ritwik Ghatak) there are these moments when the formal artistry is
suspended and disappears behind truly and naked emotions. This makes
the whole film as vulnerable like the emotions and characters it reveals.
Terrence Malick´s films have always
originated awesome female characters, the characters performed by
Sissy Spacek, Brooke Adams, Linda Manz, Q´Orianka Kilcher and
probably the most impressive character performed by Olga Kurylenko.
In comparison to the time-consuming
work on The Tree of Life, To The Wonder seems to be originated from a
relaxed promenade. It is the more astounding that this “smaller”
film by Malick continues seamless the series of masterpieces since 1998. This period began with three epic films, two of
them on American history. Where The Tree of Life for example connects
the birth and death of the universe with a very intimate family story
and where Malick brings together the world of the matter with the
spiritual world, To The Wonder connects the earthly and physical love
between people with the spiritual love together. These two kinds of
love are never opposed, they supplement each other. The Spanish
priest is after Neil and Marina the third main character of this
film. The religiousness in the films by Terrence Malick is
especially one of the bodies of the living beings and the landscapes.
Much more more than in the mystery of the creation Malick seems to be
fascinated by its results.
When we see the priest performing
uninspired sermon in a nearly deserted church, he seems to be
isolated in his despair. As a contrast we see him later working in
the prison. One can sense now a special tenderness towards the failed
individuals of this world. Or later his commitment when he helps old
people to walk, offers a dying old person the last sacrament or when
he gives his jacket away for an aging drug addicted woman. As soon as
the priest commits himself to the worldly reality (especially at the
end of the film) it brings him - not closer to God -than at least it
offers him the closest contact to the result of the creation.
Exactly in these moments a film by Terrence Malick becomes a visual
prayer. Near the end is another wonderful moment, a prayer-like
monologue of the priest talking to Jesus Christ.
Christ be with me
Christ before me.
Christ behind me.
Christ in me.
Christ beneath me.
Christ above me.
Christ on my right.
Christ on my left
Christ in my heart.
During this monologue we see again one of
these memory-like sequences when Marina watches a child which is
feeding goose. The most striking aspect in this monologue is that it is
based on very concrete physical orientation like with in, behind,
neath, on my left etc.That reminds as well in the first tries of
children to express a very physical-spatial orientation in words. Whenever we
have to talk about religious aspects in films by Terrence Malick,
dogmatic preaching or ideological predetermination we will never
find.
To The Wonder is like I said before a
long and ecstatic dance and finally Malick is the Dervish who
combines the movements of the camera and the actors to one coherent
movement.
One can always talk about the light in
this film which is typical for the last films by Terrence Malick. It
is well known that Malick always uses (as far as the technique allows)
natural light sources. But light is much more as a technical aspect
of film making.Last but not least it is one of the key elements of
cinema, film making as well like film projection. And it is at the
same time the key element of the world, the formation and the
visualisation. Light comes in a concrete way from the sun as the
source of life. Like in The Tree of Life, light is always both, a
measurably physical process but as well a symbol which goes through
all human civilizations and religions. In another impressing
scene we see the priest together with a black church servant who
cleans the coloured windows of the church. The servant describes the
light that “hit´s you” which enters in different colours through
the glass. Once again there is a combination of the meaning of the
light as a physical phenomenon but as well as a spiritual symbol.
When the priest holds his hand on the window one can almost feel the
warmth of the filtered sun rays. In other moments we see landscapes
in a red and golden light lightening the faces of the protagonists.
The light of this film will hunt me forever.
In many ways it makes sense to me that
some critics consider The Tree of Life and To The Wonder as the beginning of Terrence
Malick´s autobiographical period. (His newest film Knight Of Cups confirms that again) Maybe slightly more encrypted than
in The Tree of Life (see remarks and links at the end of this text),
To The Wonder includes again a life confession, in this film a
failed love relationship.The intensity in which this relationship is
filmed makes it impossible for me to imagine that Malick has filmed
that without having experienced that before. In my text on The Tree
Of Life I defined my own term, the “Malick paradox" And I refer
to the authenticity of emotions and moods which appear despite all
logistic and technical aspects of film making nearly unfiltered and f
for this reason so affecting.
The last films by Terrence Malick are
unique in their almost provoking vulnerability. I am literally
touched by his films, because they often deal with touches. One
should take attention how the lovers touch each other and how (except outbursts of violence) caresses are dying when their
relationship is in its decline.
At the end Marina will leave the
country. The love has failed, the divorce is legally executed. The
farewell at the airport and the unbearable sad long walk of Marine
through the gangway to her aircraft evokes the certainty that this
farewell is final.
The final of the film consists mostly
of memory like fragments. We see again some breathtaking beautiful landscapes.
Marina appears again after the farewell like Pocahontas in The New
World after a letter has pronounced her death as a being of a
subjective memory. And again fragments of happiness appear but now as
moments passed by long ago. It almost seems that Marina has passed
away. In these sequences there is the dance of Marina in a super
market, a moment mostly ridiculed in negative reviews of this film.
For me it is a moment which is so crazy, incredible beautiful and affecting at the same
time that I always have to take a deep breath. Oh if I could stop the film
at this wonderful moment!
Like so often we see Olga Kurylenko moves rather dancing than walking through the landscape. In one moment the light of the sinking sunpenetrates her beautiful face like X-rays. This moment is as dramatic as the image of the
dying sun burning our planet in The Tree Of Life. And like at the end
of The Thin Red Line the film ends with a glimpse of the lost
paradise in this case their voyagage to the Mt. Saint Michel, the final image of the
film.
The film goes always under my skin and I mean that literally because according to Renoir the soul is directly under the skin.
Rüdiger Tomczak
Notes:
I can´t recommend often enough the
wonderful text by Adrian Martin on The Tree Of Life, Great Events andOrdinary People which is a laudatio for this film but as much an
excellent observation of Malick´s work and how it is embedded in the
history of cinema.
A treasure for biographical details of
Terrence Malick is the book One Big Soul by Paul Meher jr, 2012.
Two other texts are very interesting
biographical details, The Runaway Genius by Peter Biskind (which I
recommend not without reservations)
and an inspiring essay by Bob Turner on
To The Wonder
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