If we say that the previous work "The Tree of Life" with grand pictures and intentions, and ambiguous plots and characters still has a narrative about growing up and understanding in the entanglement with a powerful father, when the new work "To Wonderland", Malik will The drastic removal of all the coincidences, designs and contradictions that a drama film should have, has completely made a "confidant body" pure love film full of scenery and spiritual insight.
Of course, anyone's pure love is also a matter, a matter that always revolves around shyness, tenderness, quarrels, cheating, and ultimately still sticking to each other, a matter that is not much the same as any pair of lovers. Film masters are always good at changing patterns or grasping emotions in these things that are not new under the sun, and they are never wordy again and again to make people move. It's just that Terrence Malik chose to tell it in the "least cinematic" way of film ontology. The sparse dialogue and soft plot are not the energy to promote love, but are only embellished with 2 hours of comfortable voiceovers. It's comparable to the small freshness of agriculture and animal husbandry in those backlit shots.
The dazzling afternoon backlight that makes people want to embrace, the soft dusk light filled with the scent of wheat waves, and the shimmering waves hitting the land, Terrence Malik really told stories as early as 1978 in "Days of Heaven", With the "golden hour" shooting method of turning on the camera before sunset every day, he has proved his powerful ability to sculpt light and shadow. He can always put a group of Hollywood's biggest names under its mysterious light, modify their already distinctive shapes and corners, and let the gates of heaven gradually open outside the camera, and inspire these beautiful people on the earth - locusts rush through Richard Gere ("Days of Heaven") who accepted fate after the field, Adrien Brody ("The Thin Red Line") who was taken away by the Japanese army surrounded by the hand of heaven in Guadalcanal Stream, held his breath by the sea Sean Penn, who remembers his father's love ("The Tree of Life", and Ben Affleck, who doesn't say a word in this film, whether on the cliffs of Mont Saint Michel or in the wilderness of the American West.
For this heavenly glory, Malik also added an unrelated priest, played by Javier Bardem, to the love story, which was almost exclusively French voiceover by Olga Kurylenko. Therefore, he also tried to build a tower of Babel that transcends language. Whether the people in the film speak French, English, Spanish or Italian, they all understand the language of love and the whispering of God.
Malik loves pure beauty. After decades of filmmaking practice, he almost achieved a 100% separation of sound and picture in this "To Wonderland". In addition to the irrelevant dialogues in twos and threes, the purified voice is poetry, Malik's thinking and state of mind about love; the picture is also undergoing a thorough purification, even the abandoned industrial ruins that should be full of dirt have also been Carved like a fairyland.
This kind of experimentation is not new. Fans have seen the powerful charm of such prose-style "audio movies" in Godfrey Reggio's "Life Trilogy". Mann shot "Blue" with only poetry and an all-blue screen after going blind. But only Terrence Malik can bring the experimental images to film festivals and even cinemas. It's a pity that, due to the previous "Tree of Life", the golden palm stumbling block, "Towards Wonderland" can only be evaluated as a miniature version of "The Tree of Life", which is still beautiful but has no new ideas, or, in other words, experimental Artwork is always a piece of art that is kept on the shelf, and cannot be a product that satisfies the inertial viewing habits.
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