To the Wonder and the Other

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The absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half-real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. - Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The title of Terrence Malick's 6th film refers to two things. The first being the ancient abby off the north coast of France, Mont-Saint Michel. The abby began construction sometime in the 700's, A.D., and has ever since been a monument for pilgrimage. Built out on an island, pilgrims used to have to risk the dangers of the fast-flowing tide and sinking sand to make it to the castle-like abby. Often times there would be a heavy fog surrounding the island, making it almost impossible to see one's way out to the island and pilgrims even died attempting to do so. Its size and location earned it the title "the Wonder." 

The second meaning of the title refers to the Wonder of love. That may sound cheesy and like an incredibly pretentious metaphor when paired with Mont-Saint Michel. And at many times during the film, even I, as a huge fan of Malick's style and films, found myself turned off by a lot of the overly deep lines of narration. "What is this love that loves us?" says Marina at one point. What does that even mean? In terms of meaning and ambition, To the Wonder does not even come close to Malick's previous film, The Tree of Life (which I recently decided is my new favorite film, I think). And yet, this very simple story of a couple who falls out of love and the side-story of  a priest who cannot find joy in God's supposed-love and presence falls awfully short of providing a rich and beautifully crafted experience like The Tree of Life. By itself, The Tree of Life raises, ponders, and explicates very challenging ideas and themes. On the other hand, To the Wonder functions more as a springboard for which to raise further questions. Malick is obviously interested in much larger themes than he could accurately reflect in this film. Thus, in accordance with the title of my blog, I feel obligated to lend my two cents to the conversation.

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This film begins with Neil (Ben Affleck) and Marina (Olga Kurylenko) wandering around the corridors of Mont-Saint Michel and adventuring out onto the tidal plains. There's some beautiful camera work here and I really wish Malick would have spent more time exploring the abby itself because it is a very beautiful place that I had the privilege of visiting last Summer (of which you can see my pictures here if you want!). As the film shows and to which I can testify personally, the abby stands as a sort of timeless thing. Being so old and looking like something out of Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones, being there feels like stepping outside of reality. I wish I didn't have to leave when it came time for my family and I to go down to Paris because it meant returning to the real world. Once again, this may sound incredibly cheesy, but it's true, and this is why I think Malick chose to begin the love story here. Neil and Marina "climb the steps to the Wonder" as Marina says in the film and metaphorically fall in love outside of reality. Especially for Neil, coming from the country in Oklahoma, going to Paris and Mont-Saint Michel is indeed a sort of stepping outside of reality for him. Thus it's easy to see how their relationship flourishes.

But once Marina moves back to Oklahoma with Neil and her daughter, she soon begins to realize the artificiality of what they had before. Without really explaining why, they begin to drift apart, fight, and finally Marina leaves. Afterwards, Neil has a short tryst with an old friend from school, Jane (Rachel McAdams), but that soon also crumbles as Neil apparently realizes that he has some sort of responsibility for Marina. Marina then comes back again and the two of them get married, but things still don't go so well, and the film ends on a rather ambiguous note as to the future of their relationship.

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At the same time, there are several sequences involving this priest at the local parish, Father Quintana (Javier Bardem), and his musings about God and love. The parts of the film involving Quintana I found most compelling and could have used more of perhaps because Quintana's struggles with experiencing God's presence and/or love remind me of similar things I have experienced in the past. One main quote from Quintana can help to begin discussing the more complicated things this film seeks to reveal:

"We wish to live inside the safety of the laws. We fear to choose. Jesus insists on choice. The one thing that he condemns utterly is avoiding the choice. To choose is to commit yourself. And to commit yourself is to run the risk, 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."

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More than anything else, this quote demands the importance of choice and commitment. What does it mean to choose? Looking back to the quote from Kundera I included at the beginning, making a choice incurs a sort of burden. Choosing someone or something over a hundred other possibilities is a decision to bind yourself to that person or thing; it is to take something upon yourself. The cost of such a decision is the inevitability of weight. In choosing, you will no doubt be compelled once again to reaffirm that choice and thus that choice takes on more weight. As Kundera says early on in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, "the heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become." On the other hand, by refusing to be bound to any person or thing through choice and thus incurring a burden, many will make an attempt at lightness or the "absolute absence of a burden." 

However, there's a reason Kundera refers to this state of living and being as "unbearable." Sure, by avoiding choices that demand reaffirmation, one can attempt to avoid risk, failure, and betrayal, as Quinatana says. Yet, without a place to anchor actions and being, everything becomes only "half-real." Such a way of life may make you feel "free" for a time, but soon you will discover that your life is "insignificant." Like Tomas in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Neil represents someone trying to avoid burdens and seeking after lightness. When Marina leaves the first time, it is a result of Neil becoming more aloof and detached because he no doubt feels himself being weighed down by Marina's presence and needs. Soon enough, Neil realizes his selfishness and brings Marina back to marry her, but once again, they cannot seem to remain together as one. 

As is the case with Kundera's novel, love and marriage in this film function as the supreme example of a situation in which two individuals attempt to live together in harmony. Such a decision is a colliding of worlds and realities. French philosopher and theorist Jacques Derrida attempts to communicate this idea in a short excerpt from the book by John D. Caputo, Deconstruction in a Nutshell:

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"Justice, if it has to do with the other, with the infinite distance of the other, is always unequal to the other, is always incalculable. You cannot calculate justice. Levinas says somewhere that the definition of justice - which is very minimal but which I love, which I think is really rigorous - is that justice is the relation to the other."

At the heart of this quote lies the problem of relating to and knowing another person entirely. We may often think we know a person very well or in some cases everything there is to no about him or her. But do we really? Derrida's concept of justice is all about extending grace, forgiveness, and compassion to "the Other" which is the way he refers to any individual other than ourselves. Derrida's concept of justice also involves a level of power and abuse that is important to understand and to try and avoid. Kundera puts it best in another passage from The Unbearable Lightness of Being: "We can never establish with certainty what part of our relations with others is the result of our emotions - love, antipathy, charity, or malice - and what part is predetermined by the power play between individuals." In any relationship between two persons, especially in marriage, it is incredibly difficult to avoid selfishness because of our innate subjectivity and to seek to accomplish what makes ourselves happy in a relationship. In accordance with Derridean justice, such selfishness exists because of the infinite gap between each person.

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Ultimately, it is because of Time that we cannot truly know one another or be completely joined to another. The time that Neil and Marina spent at Mont-Saint Michel function like moments out of time. As I said before, the timelessness of the place created a haven for their relationship to flourish without feeling the present ever fading and the uncertainty of the future always there to threaten what may come. The end of the film represents Marina's longing to go back to that time and repeat what first brought them joy and happiness. We see a shot of her in a field and she looks back over her shoulder and the camera cuts to a beautiful long shot of Mont-Saint Michel in the distance and the screen silently fades to black.

"And therein lies man's plight," Kundera says, "human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition." As depressing as that may sound, To the Wonder demonstrates its value in celebrating the "wonder" of humans striving to overcome the constraints of Time and subjectivity through love. Looking back to Quintana's quote, to love is to run the risk of failure, but we all cannot help but love. It is the ultimate way in which we as human beings struggle against everything that makes us selfish, arrogant, and proud, and that in itself is an amazing thing worth risking any failure.