SALON

Sunday, Apr 28, 2013 5:00 PM UTC

Terrence Malick, divine director

In "To the Wonder," the reclusive auteur proves he's the most spiritual filmmaker working today

By

Topics: Religion Dispatches, Terrence Malick, To the Wonder, Movies, Religion, faith, , ,

Terrence Malick, divine directorScene still from "To the Wonder"
This article originally appeared on Religion Dispatches.

Religion Dispatches“Show, don’t tell,” is common advice to screenwriters and fiction writers. In contrast to primarily non-fictioners like yours truly, those who compose films and novels and stories are rightly encouraged to avoid didacticism, to let the story speak for itself, never to make the meanings and morals too obvious.

Terrence Malick’s typically beautiful new film, To the Wonder, does exactly that, yet its depiction of the divine love/human love parallel is so elliptical as to flirt with inscrutability.

To be sure, Malick’s screenplay does telegraph the main theme of the work explicitly, usually in voiceovers (there are a lot of voiceovers) by a doubt-ridden priest played by Javier Bardem. Bardem’s priest wonders why we fall in and out of love with God, as we watch a couple played by Ben Affleck and Olga Kurylenko fall in and out of love with each other. If the parallelism were not clear enough, Bardem’s priest—played with brilliant understatement by an actor who often goes for the jugular—tells us how human love can serve as a gateway to divine love. Which (metaphysical spoiler alert) is roughly the final resolution of the film.

But it was no coincidence that the hipsters and film geeks lingered outside the Landmark Sunshine Theater, talking about what it all meant. This is a film that announces its theme, but then develops it not in a linear way, but through visual poetry, allusion, and metaphor. In this way, it is yet another of Malick’s brilliant evocations of the spiritual life. And perhaps a frustrating piece of art.

If you like, you can read To the Wonder as entirely allegorical, á la Life of Pi. Neil and Marina fall in love at Mont St. Michel in France, a revelatory moment akin to God’s covenant at Sinai. They live for a short time in paradise, but then exile themselves to a very contemporary Oklahoma: a land not of prairies and cowboys, but of pollution and strip malls. For a while, they stay in love, but the passion cools, and they begin to fight. They separate, Neil starts another relationship, they come back together, they fight again. And all the while, Javier Bardem wonders aloud why it is that God hides himself, why what is sometimes so passionate an embrace can grow so cold.

As with Malick’s other films, God is everywhere in To the Wonder, not only in the many scenes that take place in churches and cathedrals. Once again we run through fields of waving grass, stare at waterfalls, and gasp at sunsets. Marina dances ecstatically, in love both with Neil and with the majesty all around her. Malick has made a wise choice, however unintentionally, by making so few films (this is his sixth in almost forty years); revisiting these images provides a sense of continuity, even comfort. We are again in Malick’s mystical, Catholic world, as we have been in most of his other films; we are oriented again to his particular form of wonder.

As usual, Malick also provides us with some of the most sympathetic religious figures one sees on the American screen. Bardem’s doubting priest is perhaps a familiar figure, but we also watch him minister to prisoners, the ill, and the marginal. His God may be in eclipse, but his love remains strong. “What is this love that loves us?” he asks. Fortunately, the answer is shown, not told.

I think all of us who have been engaged with the spiritual life experience the oscillation that the priest describes, and that Nick and Marina display. Personally, there have been times in my life when I have been as God-soaked as Malick seems to be, and his films have placed me in a state of near rapture.

For the last few years, however, I have been more like the priest in To the Wonder. I have found my earlier passion cooling, my heart turning more toward the dharma and less toward the Western God, more toward contemplation and less toward devotion. Mysticism was once my passion—now I see it as a set of mind states which may be transformative, or may be dangerous. I have come to feel that the costs of religious fervor probably outweigh the benefits. Dancing Hasidim and joyous Christians no longer inspire me; they make me nervous.

Unlike the priest in Malick’s film, I no longer grope for the fiery faith I once had. On the contrary, I see it as more problem than solution. I am finding myself pulled toward the cool, the empirical, the contemplative, the Buddhist. I do not envy the vicissitudes either of the spiritual life, or of the wild Romantic life with which it is so frequently compared. As my beloved partner said to me as we exited To the Wonder, “let’s continue to see movies about people like this… but not be like them.”

More Jay Michaelson.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • This photo. President Barack Obama has a laugh during the unveiling of the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Tx., Thursday. Former first lady Barbara Bush, who candidly admitted this week we've had enough Bushes in the White House, is unamused.
    Reuters/Jason Reed

  • Rescue workers converge Wednesday in Savar, Bangladesh, where the collapse of a garment building killed more than 300. Factory owners had ignored police orders to vacate the work site the day before.
    AP/A.M. Ahad

  • Police gather Wednesday at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to honor campus officer Sean Collier, who was allegedly killed in a shootout with the Boston Marathon bombing suspects last week.
    AP/Elise Amendola

  • Police tape closes the site of a car bomb that targeted the French embassy in Libya Tuesday. The explosion wounded two French guards and caused extensive damage to Tripoli's upscale al-Andalus neighborhood.
    AP/Abdul Majeed Forjani

  • Protestors rage outside the residence of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Sunday following the rape of a 5-year-old girl in New Delhi. The girl was allegedly kidnapped and tortured before being abandoned in a locked room for two days.
    AP/Manish Swarup

  • Clarksville, Mo., residents sit in a life boat Monday after a Mississippi River flooding, the 13th worst on record.
    AP/Jeff Roberson

  • Workers pause Wednesday for a memorial service at the site of the West, Tx., fertilizer plant explosion, which killed 14 people and left a crater more than 90 feet wide.
    AP/The San Antonio Express-News, Tom Reel

  • Aerial footage of the devastation following a 7.0 magnitude earthquake in China's Sichuan province last Saturday. At least 180 people were killed and as many as 11,000 injured in the quake.
    AP/Liu Yinghua

  • On Wednesday, Hazmat-suited federal authorities search a martial arts studio in Tupelo, Miss., once operated by Everett Dutschke, the newest lead in the increasingly twisty ricin case. Last week, President Barack Obama, Sen. Roger Wicker, R.-Miss., and a Mississippi judge were each sent letters laced with the deadly poison.
    AP/Rogelio V. Solis

  • The lighting of Freedom Hall at the George W. Bush Presidential Center Thursday is celebrated with (what else but) red, white and blue fireworks.
    AP/David J. Phillip

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 9 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username ( profile | log out )

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

Salon is proud to feature content from Religion Dispatches, a daily online magazine that publishes a mix of expert opinion, in-depth reporting, and provocative updates from the intersection of religion, politics and culture.


follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Facebook has been used to find ex-lovers, childhood BFFs or the one who got away. He used it to find the guy who, without his consent, made him his drug mule.
217 points218 points | 20 comments
vote
“This could be a career ender for Michele Bachmann”
120 points121 points | 44 comments
vote
Would we give up burgers to stop climate change? New study suggests if we reduce our intake of animal products by 25%, we can halt climate change
166 points167 points | 64 comments
vote
Poll: 3 in 10 voters say “armed revolution might be necessary” - 29% say they believe they'll have to act "in order to protect our liberties" in the next few years
42 points43 points | 16 comments
vote
Capitalism, not feminism, killed home cooking–and fixing our broken food system is gonna take a lot more than some privileged women embracing “new domesticity”
32 points33 points | 19 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: "The Shelter Cycle": Raised in a cult

Recommendations