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TO THE WONDER

Let yourself be found
Slammed by critics, TERRENCE MALICK’s latest film is a masterpiece of images and words which express a powerful, elusive beauty, the thirst for the absolute and the sense of not being enough for oneself. It is centered around a priest’s struggle with the “Love who loves us” that takes flesh once again.

by Davide Perillo

There’s no middle ground with Terrence Malick: attraction or disappointment; applause or boos. It might seem strange, because the most common expression apparent on the faces of moviegoers after his films is the astonished and perplexed looks of people with many questions. But this is a sign of a true attraction, the kind that throws the doors open wide, and reveals a director whose films are always, always worth seeing–and not just because he loves Dostoevsky and Heidegger, and can let 20 years go by without making a film, regardless of Hollywood’s standards.
The same is true of his latest work, To the Wonder (with Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko, Rachel McAdams, and Javier Bardem). Having competed at the Venice Film Festival in 2012 (where it was slammed by critics), it is now in American theaters and opening in Europe in midsummer–an unusual time for an opening, and probably chosen with the idea that, since it won’t be a blockbuster, there’s no point in giving it one of the “good” dates. It’s a shame, because this is one of those films that pushes you to risk making a strong judgment, even if you aren’t a purebred cinephile. It’s a masterpiece, plain and simple.
The plot is basic, but not lacking: Neil and Marina fall in love in Paris, move to Oklahoma (together with Tatiana, Marina’s 10-year-old daughter), and go through the phases of a love story that quickly fizzles out. She returns to France when her visa expires, and Neil reconnects with Jane, an old friend who would like to marry him. A few months later, Marina appears in America again. She and Neil get back together and get married, but then she cheats on him. We won’t give away the ending here. In any case, the most important thing, this time, is certainly not “how it ends,” but what happens–or better, that which  is the subject of the few words that the characters exchange, in the continuous dialogue of each one of them with the Mystery and, above all, certain majestic and powerful images (sky, sea, light, nature) that seem to evoke Genesis.
It is a film about love, of course, in all of the various shades that it can take on in relationships: the unexpected arising, the thirst for the absolute, the pretense of being enough for oneself, a lack, decline, doubt, crisis... and the urgency of forgiveness. Incidentally, all of this is seen much more from the female vantage point (which Malick reads with an uncommon sensitivity), and shown for what it is: an unreachable, ungraspable mystery, like Marina’s continual dances onscreen. The more you love, the less you grasp. You pursue, you reach out and almost touch, you possess, you can even mistreat–but you don’t truly grasp. You can’t, insomuch as the other is other, and that which unites is so disproportionate as to make “two, one.”

Dialogue with Mystery. This gaze would be enough to make the film extraordinary. But the beauty of it is that Malick doesn’t stop there. He wants to go beyond, right to the root of love, to the Mystery that makes it and to our need to see and touch it. What he finds is the Incarnation. In his last film, The Tree of Life, a beautiful work that came out two years ago, the sense of the Mystery was everywhere–coinciding with reality–while here there is even more: the need that it take flesh.
Alongside Neil and Marina’s story runs that of Fr. Quintana, a priest in the midst of a crisis of faith. He is portrayed by Javier Bardem, whose face and body (with uncertain steps, slumped shoulders, and the dazed expression of one who has to display emotions that he doesn’t truly feel) tell the story of the darkness about which he talks continually with God: “How long will You hide Yourself? Let Yourself be found. Everywhere You are present, and still I can’t see You. You’re within me, around me, and I have no experience of You. Not as I once did. Why don’t I hold onto what I’ve found? My heart is cold, hard.” He repeats it over and over, while he gives Communion to prisoners or wanders among the outcasts on the edge of town. He retreats from the old woman who promises him, “I will pray for you, that you receive the gift of joy.” He doesn’t know how to answer the drug addict who asks him, “And now you’re going to open your Bible and give me a homily?” and he hides when the same woman knocks at his door. The dialogue between him and Christ is dramatic, dense... and true. 
During the film, the priest’s crisis intersects with that of Marina and Neil in only a few scenes. And yet, everything is condensed there, in his questions and in that uninterrupted dialogue with Christ. They ask, “How did hate take the place of love; how did my tenderness harden?” Why does love seem to “come to nothing and return to nothingness,” as Jane says after being abandoned by the man who had become close to her? Everything, all of this, is mirrored in Fr. Quintana’s crisis, and it clears up only when something happens to him–not when he recalls in his homilies that “love is not a feeling. It’s a command. You shall love whether you like it or not. Even if you feel your love has dried up. Maybe it’s being transformed into something higher.” No–it is when something happens to him, a series of encounters through which the Mystery–that Mystery of which reality is impregnated, like (and more so than) the cadmium and lead that Neil looks for in his job as an environmental inspector–becomes flesh again. This “love that loves us, that comes from nowhere, from all around,” as Marina calls it, takes flesh again as something that can be seen and touched.
Fr. Quintana has a beautiful sequence of encounters, in which this is so glowingly obvious that Pope Francis’ words come to mind: “This is the problem: the flesh of Christ!” Malick certainly couldn’t have predicted the Pope’s exhortation when he filmed this movie. But it is so objective and real that, upon seeing the film, one cannot help but think it. It imposes itself; the Mystery imposes itself, and we are molded by it, we live of it and fight with it. “What a cruel war,” says Marina’s voice over the images of an enchanting lake. “I find two women inside me: one full of love for you...the other pulls me down toward the earth.” This is our I–broken. And it would remain that way if we were not wholly embraced by a Love that reveals itself in loving us. In the film, this question returns again and again; it resounds in everything, underlying a gesture, a gaze, a sunset: “What is this love that loves us?”

Where it takes us. The wonder referred to in the film’s title is the Merveille du Mont Saint-Michel, the island abbey that appears in the first scenes. Neil and Marina climb the steps to the Wonder (Merveille), before and after having played in the miles of sand occupied and then liberated by the tides (those who have seen this phenomenon know that it is among the spectacles most similar to Creation that one can witness). Marina will later climb the steps of a motel where she cheats on her husband. And Fr. Quintana, too, will climb a few steps before the encounters that will restore God’s real presence to him. Maybe it’s a coincidence, maybe not. Malick lends himself to asking questions, more than to giving answers. But all of our life is certainly a climb up steps like those, and his film takes you there–to who we are and... to Him.