The people that hated Terrance Malick's previous film, The Tree of Life, are absolutely going to despise To the Wonder. Somehow its even more abstract, and has less of a plot, than the earlier film, and anybody who's not already on board with Malick's meditative, loose (to describe it generously), and visceral approach to filmmaking is not going to have their mind changed by this. The film is 90% voiceover and 90% of that is in French and Spanish (there's a box office draw if I ever heard one). And just like the Tree of Life it constantly cuts between past, present, and future, with little or no indication as to why. Its beatifully shot, as usual, and contains some indelible images but the end result is more of an impressionistic painting than a film. This works for awhile, but after an hour or so I did get restless. Say what you want about the Tree of Life, but at least that film had the chutzpah to try to portray the beginning and the end of the world. To the Wonder doesn't have anywhere neat that level of ambition, which it makes it more difficult to stay engaged in the more digressive sections (which the particularly snarky of you could argue make up the entire film, but then you just have a bad attitude). Its worth seeing if you're already all in for Malick, but probably not otherwise.
One other note: Given that the dialogue is majority voiceover we get plenty of scenes before and after, presumably, important conversations. This definitely is in line with the film's general approach, but it definitely keeps all the characters at arms length.
One other note: Given that the dialogue is majority voiceover we get plenty of scenes before and after, presumably, important conversations. This definitely is in line with the film's general approach, but it definitely keeps all the characters at arms length.
