As with The Tree of Life, the film's conception and plot stem from autobiographical elements: Malick met his second wife Michèle Morette in Paris in the early 1980s, and the couple lived in Oklahoma for a period prior to their separation. By March 2011, Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko, Rachel McAdams, and Javier Bardem were cast. At the same time, principal photography commenced, and wrapped in May. Filming took place in Paris and Manche, France, as well as Bartlesville, Pawhuska, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Malick and his crew adopted an experimental approach. There was no script that was used during filming. Malick would give the actors pages of thoughts and independent lines every morning and he would ask them to play the emotions without speaking, just with their body. Kurylenko described the shooting process as more like a dance performance than traditional acting. Likewise, cinematographer on the film, Emmanuel Lubezki, was given instructions to be "in the eye of the hurricane" — in the middle of a scene, constantly interacting with the characters. Lubezki called the film "abstract", and described it as being less tied to theatrical conventions and more purely cinematic than any prior film directed by Malick. Malick handed out works of literature to his editing team for inspiration, such as Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Walker Percy's The Moviegoer. Also referenced to his editors was a phrase found in Margaret A. Doody’s introduction to Samuel Richardson’s 1740 novel Pamela. The phrase "radiant zigzag becoming", became an unofficial motto for the film's editing team during post-production. Also referenced during the editing of the film were the French New Wave films Jules and Jim by Truffaut and Godard's Breathless, Pierrot le Fou, and Vivre Sa Vie. They were chosen for their elliptical narrative and editing styles which Malick hoped his editing team would embrace.
The film stars Affleck, Kurylenko, McAdams, and Bardem. The cast and their performances are slightly disappointing. Their voiceovers only offers empty platitudes and their characters are human and endearing but ultimately quite boring.
As visually sumptuous as it is narratively spartan, Malick's To the Wonder echoes elements of the writer-director's recent work - for better and for worse. The film was rather incoherent, disconnected, self-interrupting, obsessed with pointless minutiae and crammed full of odd, limp stabs at profundity. You’ll find yourself searching in the margins of each shot for something or someone tangible to grasp onto. I don't believe that the Austin-based filmmaker has ever made a bad, but it is the first Malick film I’ve watched where the dots never came together to form a legible image. Compared to Malick's body of work, the film suffers from the lack of rhetorical connective tissue that would further connect to Malick's themes as well as better characterizations, due to the film's highly chaotic nature.
As visually sumptuous as it is narratively spartan, Malick's To the Wonder echoes elements of the writer-director's recent work - for better and for worse. The film was rather incoherent, disconnected, self-interrupting, obsessed with pointless minutiae and crammed full of odd, limp stabs at profundity. You’ll find yourself searching in the margins of each shot for something or someone tangible to grasp onto. I don't believe that the Austin-based filmmaker has ever made a bad, but it is the first Malick film I’ve watched where the dots never came together to form a legible image. Compared to Malick's body of work, the film suffers from the lack of rhetorical connective tissue that would further connect to Malick's themes as well as better characterizations, due to the film's highly chaotic nature.
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