e mail

Although The Tree of Life was more of a Magnum Opus for Malick, I stopped watching that one. It was very moving but ultimately drawn on subtleties surrounding much larger themes of grief and loneliness, and I just couldn’t take the challenging camera work anymore. In To the Wonder, I was more smitten. Ben is a great hunk starting out in the movie with a new woman who has a 10 year old child. They move from Europe to his place in Oklahoma, and their world becomes smaller. They’re shown bounding through a drug store playing with bouncy balls and joyfully Americanized. He cares for the daughter. Then problems arise as they do, and he reunited with the high school sweetheart. I don’t even remember what happens to that relationship but the first woman and her daughter end up back in Europe in the same place they’re shown hanging out with Ben in the beginning of the film. It was a nice touch to show how when relationships end they don’t end you, but you’re sort of back where you started with all the memories. I found the whole thing to be very quaint. A lot of the movie is sort of shared in glances like looking through a photo album and overheard in whispers rather than direct conversation which makes it a good date movie to concentrate on your partner. I really, really liked this film as a meditation on the incomplete modern relationship.