movie review to the wonder

"We are nothing without stories, and so we invite you to believe in this one." Sebastian Lelio's fascinating "The Wonder" opens with a prologue that includes this line, one that's crucial to unpacking the film that follows. Working with co-writers Alice Birch & Emma Donoghue to adapt Donoghue's novel, Lelio doesn't just want you to passively watch the story of what's to come. It's not an invitation to hear or see this story, but to believe in this one. Lelio is less concerned about the practical truths and lies of "The Wonder" than he is about what they mean, what they say about humanity, and how they interrogate what we believe.

Pugh plays Lib Wright, an English nurse in the year 1862, a year when the mass famine of the 1840s has left scars across the Irish landscape to which she travels. She has been summoned there by a committee looking for answers about a local girl who appears to be a miracle—one that includes arguably underwritten characters played by Toby Jones , Ciaran Hinds , and Brian F. O'Byrne. Nine-year-old Anna O'Donnell (the excellent Kila Lord Cassidy) has not eaten in four months. She claims to subsist only on manna from heaven, and her survival has led to worshippers who want to confer with this potential saint. Her mother Rosaleen (Cassidy's actual mother Elaine) insists that there is no trickery here, but Lib's job will be to watch Anna to see if food is somehow being snuck into her bedroom. A journalist named William ( Tom Burke ) has also traveled there to fuel Lib's skepticism, and it's no coincidence that both the writer and the nurse have brought the grief of loss in their baggage.

Lib is constantly being told, "You are only here to watch." She is the observer, just like us. There are fascinating bookends to this story that reaches too far in terms of form but it's interesting to see a piece that's about faith and skepticism in equal measure be so directly confrontational with its audience. Naturally, Lib's instinct begins where most viewers would—doubtful that Anna isn't eating and then increasingly concerned about her declining physical state. Pugh takes us on a journey with her from skepticism to concern and "The Wonder" becomes a study of empathy and action. How long can we be expected to just "watch" when the life of a child is in danger? How long can we stay inactive when faith is destructive enough to tear communities and families apart?

A drama this ambitious demands a fearless performer like Pugh, who knows exactly the tightrope to walk when it comes to the story's delicate balance between realism and melodrama. Pugh can't lean too far into the emotional or risk turning "The Wonder" into a more traditional melodrama, the kind of thing that's easier to place in a box and walk away from. Lelio doesn't want that. He wants viewers to feel as unsettled as Lib, who becomes increasingly unmoored as she realizes she has either been asked to bear witness to a miracle or the death of a child. Lib's uncertainty is enhanced by an excellent score by Lelio's regular composer Matthew Herbert that avoids the lilt common to period pieces in favor of something more uncomfortable. And the phenomenal Ari Wegner (" The Power of the Dog ") shoots the film with a gloomy, gray palette that almost makes it look like a horror flick.

There are times when Lelio is a bit unsure of his ambition, falling back on a more traditional pace and rhythm, but he always gets back to the more interesting version of "The Wonder" that ultimately comes together. Burke's journalist character is also woefully underwritten, a part that's like a plot device here instead of a rich counterpart to Lib. He's not bad but he's frustratingly stuck in terms of character. Burke is always an intriguing performer, but this film falters a bit when he's around as if he's invading the space between Anna and Lib instead of enhancing it.

Even if its questions of faith don't intrigue Netflix subscribers, the performances will. Lelio has proven himself to be a consistently phenomenal director of actresses, drawing great work from Daniela Vega (" A Fantastic Woman "), Julianne Moore (" Gloria Bell "), and Rachel McAdams (" Disobedience "). We can now add Pugh (and Cassidy really) to that list as another woman who is consistently asked by the men of this film to step aside and merely observe. She starts merely watching, but she ends the movie with a different kind of resolve, one that comes from her unshakeable belief.

In limited theatrical release today and on Netflix on November 16 th .

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

• Kíla Lord Cassidy as Anna O'Donnell
• Florence Pugh as Lib Wright
• Tom Burke as William Byrne
• Niamh Algar as Kitty
• Elaine Cassidy as Rosaleen O'Donnell
• Toby Jones as Dr. McBrearty
• Ciarán Hinds as
• Dermot Crowley as
• Alice Birch
• Sebastián Lelio

Cinematographer

Writer (based on the novel by).

• Emma Donoghue
• Kristina Hetherington
• Matthew Herbert

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To the Wonder Reviews

Despite a lackluster script, I think the performances are exactly what Malick, the director, was wanting out of them.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Aug 23, 2024

To The Wonder isn't a diatribe or a lamentation. It's the celebration of movement, of the existence of earth and water, of a woman's hair and face, of the possibility of human contact in moments of loneliness. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 23, 2022

What an audience makes of To the Wonder must be a personal experience, although the basic threads of the story have autobiographical relevance for the director.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 6, 2022

Malick has given us another standout picture that takes a real (sometimes uncomfortably so) look at relationships, faith, and the quest for love in both.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 27, 2022

This a film that lives in the fine details and that means its got loads of rewatchability. Though it's by no means one of Malick's best, it certainly stands head and shoulders above most of the shlock in the multiplexes.

Full Review | Nov 12, 2020

It is destined to be a film embraced by some, loathed by many, and misunderstood by most.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.0/4.0 | Sep 26, 2020

It is undeniable to say that 'To The Wonder' would have been an excellent silent film, but since it is not, the problem here is its narrative, the unfriendly characters and, obviously, the drought of the dialogues. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Jun 25, 2020

Although the filmmaker often puts specifically Christian imagery into his film, his sensibility turns out to be more Zen: he can find manifestations of glory in both the noblest gesture and the darkest impulse.

Full Review | Mar 25, 2020

...To The Womder rises above its several flaws, proving to be a sensory visual feast that captures the soul of life in all its wonder.

Full Review | Nov 27, 2019

To the Wonder's scenario threatens to become a hermetic montage of Malick tropes. All divine energy without the gravitas of the dark matter.

Full Review | Aug 14, 2019

Experimentation in form is always a welcome license of the talented director. But complete liberation from all narrative structure also demands that something else of interest take its place, and To the Wonder never finds that interest.

Full Review | Aug 5, 2019

A mesmerizing, haunting work of immense beauty and insight, a film that is constantly alive, pulsing with feeling and emotion in every frame.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 8, 2019

Where The Tree of Life was sanctimonious, To the Wonder is about the failure of sanctimony.

Full Review | Feb 22, 2019

A sinuous tapestry of breathtaking imagery, To the Wonder is undeniably a beautiful example of a visionary filmmaker creating yet another visual rhapsody.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 9, 2019

One of the best expositions of the perceptual potential of cinema; Malick succeeds in crystallising the precarious sentiment of emotion in the early stages of a relationship.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 3, 2019

To the Wonder is intoxicating, no doubt, but not as a movie. Watched in a theater, it's boring and pretentious. It would actually serve much better playing on a wall at a party.

Full Review | Oct 17, 2018

Is Malick so revered that nobody has the presence of mind to sit down with him and plead, "Please, Terrence: enough with the twirling!"

Full Review | Aug 30, 2018

Malick maintains his signature esoteric post-narrative style with the romantic drama.

Full Review | Aug 7, 2018

Part of the problem with "To the Wonder" is that it doesn't offer credible characters, just postures.

Full Review | Feb 21, 2018

Though Malick has a knack for enhancing the mood of each scene with stunning visual effects, it's not enough to boost the film.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Sep 7, 2017

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Movie Review: To the Wonder (2012)

• Howard Schumann
• Movie Reviews
• 9 responses
• --> May 1, 2013

A whirlwind romance.

Permeated by a sense of the sacred, Terrence Malick’s latest film points us to the transience of all things. Appropriately titled To the Wonder , the film has Malick’s stamp written all over it: Philosophical voice-overs uttered in hushed tones to a haunting orchestral soundtrack, panoramic displays of the physical beauty of nature, a story that features little dialogue, and an untranslatable feeling for the spiritual. Released just two years after his critically acclaimed “ The Tree of Life ,” Malick introduces us to the main characters immediately but they feel more like symbols than real people and we never really get to know and understand the “why” of their actions.

Neil (Ben Affleck) is an environmental inspector traveling in Europe when he meets Marina (Olga Kurylenko), a divorcée who is living in Paris with her ten year-old daughter Tatiana (Tatiana Chiline). As the film opens, we hear Olga’s voice-overs turn the world into inner space: “Newborn, I open my eyes. I melt into the eternal night. A spark. You brought me out of the shadows. You lifted me off the ground. You brought me back to life.” “What is this love that loves us? It comes from nowhere. From all around. The sky. You, cloud. You love me too.” One is unclear if she is talking to Neil or to God.

Visiting Mount St. Michel, Neil and Marina climb to the top of the abbey “to the Wonder” where she sees a world “forever at peace.” The camera then caresses them in the mud of the beach as they express their love playfully — glancing, laughing, gesturing, and kissing with freedom and sensuality, “two wings of the same spirit.” They go to Paris and walk among its fountains, rivers, and monuments. Olga twirls like a ballet dancer with uncommon grace but Neil is expressionless, stolid, and impenetrable. When they go back to Neil’s home in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, however, their relationship takes a different shape, existing in a stultifying environment of polluted water, cookie-cutter houses furnished sparingly, and the feeling, expressed cogently by Tatiana, that “there’s something missing,” perhaps mirroring Malick’s childhood in the Southwest.

Sadly, the “something missing” begins to be filled in by quarreling, lack of communication, and frustration. Like the local Spanish-speaking priest, Father Quintana, played by a soulful Javier Bardem, they are searching for something that seems just beyond their grasp. Marina seeks solace with the priest but, like the Curé d’Ambricourt in “ Diary of a Country Priest ,” he is filled with self-doubt and a sense of failure. He tells God “Everywhere you’re present and I can’t even see you.” He asks “Show me how to love you” and, as he tends to the poor, the addicts, the prisoners, and the sick, recites the moving words from St. Patrick’s Breastplate:

“Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise…”

Looking for a deeper meaning.

He gives sermons to a half-empty church, hears confessions, gives communion, but the look on his face prompts an elderly woman to pray for him so he can “achieve the gift of joy.” Father Quintana’s alienation reflects the crisis of Neil and Marina whose conflicts result in the desire for freedom. Marina goes back to France when her visa expires, but experiences a new loneliness in Europe and returns to Oklahoma where Neil has reunited with an old friend, Jane, (Rachel McAdams), now a rancher raising buffaloes.

Enigmatic, distancing, and often infuriating, To the Wonder does not have the immediate impact of “The Tree of Life,” yet in its own way is a meditation on love just as mysterious and profound. A film that takes place “in a realm which no word has ever entered,” it is a work that suggests, implies, and evokes rather than commands, forcing us to confront how we connect to ourselves and the world around us, to be with the images without trying to figure them out, to weave our way in and out of the silences, to let go into the acceptance of not knowing, and to be aware of the wonder around us and bathe in its light.

Tagged: affair , faith , love , priest

I am a retired father of two living with my wife in Vancouver, B.C. who has had a lifelong interest in the arts.

Movie Review: Hit the Road (2021) Movie Review: Happening (2021) Movie Review: Playground (2021) Movie Review: The Power of the Dog (2021) Movie Review: After Yang (2021) Movie Review: The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021) Movie Review: The Worst Person in the World (2021)

'Movie Review: To the Wonder (2012)' have 9 comments

May 1, 2013 @ 9:35 pm Wyatt

Malick’s work and I are like oil and water. I didn’t get Tree of Life and am convinced To the Wonder is a further extension of his confusing, drawn out narrative.

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May 2, 2013 @ 1:31 pm Yolk

Just because you don’t get what Terrence Malick is aiming for doesn’t mean his work is confusing or drawn out. It means you are more comfortable with things that fit neatly in a box.

May 1, 2013 @ 9:51 pm radan

I already know McAdams and Kurylenko can’t act worth a shit. How does Affleck perform? Bardem?

May 1, 2013 @ 11:18 pm Chief Brown

You have to go back to the 70s for “Badlands” to find the last real good Malick film.

May 2, 2013 @ 6:48 am SeeGull

Best left for a rental.

May 2, 2013 @ 10:53 am Big-Skinny

Cinematic snobbery. Stay far away lest it infects you.

May 3, 2013 @ 4:17 pm Howard Schumann

Personally, I think Affleck is miscast but then again, his character is a cipher and he is enigmatic as the script requires. It is a film, however, that you can’t try to figure out but have to just relax into it and let it roll over you. It has a truly spiritual quality, if you give it enough space to reach you on a deeper level.

May 25, 2013 @ 2:14 am neer

Pretentious and overbearing. There is a consolation prize for sitting through this awful film though: Rachel McAdams and Olga Kurylenko get naked.

June 17, 2013 @ 6:00 pm HELL-NATION

Suicide is the only answer.

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To the Wonder

After falling in love in Paris, Marina and Neil come to Oklahoma, where problems arise. Their church's Spanish-born pastor struggles with his faith, while Neil encounters a woman from his ch... Read all After falling in love in Paris, Marina and Neil come to Oklahoma, where problems arise. Their church's Spanish-born pastor struggles with his faith, while Neil encounters a woman from his childhood. After falling in love in Paris, Marina and Neil come to Oklahoma, where problems arise. Their church's Spanish-born pastor struggles with his faith, while Neil encounters a woman from his childhood.

• Terrence Malick
• Ben Affleck
• Olga Kurylenko
• Javier Bardem
• 193 User reviews
• 310 Critic reviews
• 58 Metascore
• 6 wins & 9 nominations

Top cast 44

• Father Quintana

• Neighbor #1
• Neighbor #2
• Classmate #1
• Classmate #2
• Teenage Girl with Baby
• Woman at Wedding
• Parish Council President
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia Olga Kurylenko , familiar with Terrence Malick 's tendency to cut entire characters out of his movies completely, made him promise that he would keep her in the film.
• Goofs When Jane and Neil get out of their car in the midst of the bison, cameras reflected in the car windows and doors in various shots.

Father Quintana : We wish to live inside the safety of the laws. We fear to choose. Jesus insists on choice. The one thing he condemns utterly is avoiding the choice. To choose is to commit yourself. And to commit yourself is to run the risk, is to run the risk of failure, the risk of sin, the risk of betrayal. But Jesus can deal with all of those. Forgiveness he never denies us. The man who makes a mistake can repent. But the man who hesitates, who does nothing, who buries his talent in the earth, with him he can do nothing.

• Connections Edited into Thy Kingdom Come (2018)
• Soundtracks Harold in Italy Op. 16 II. March of the pilgrims Composed by Hector Berlioz Performed by The San Diego Symphony Orchestra Conducted by Yoav Talmi Courtesy of Naxos By arrangement with Source/Q

User reviews 193

Not an accessible film.

• May 17, 2013
• How long is To the Wonder? Powered by Alexa
• February 22, 2013 (Ireland)
• United States
• Official Facebook
• Official site
• Sign Languages
• Bartlesville, Oklahoma, USA
• Brothers K Productions
• Redbud Pictures
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• Apr 14, 2013
• Runtime 1 hour 52 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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