Terrence Malick's "To The Wonder" - The Best Movie of 2013

The one movie that stuck with me more than any other, and the one I will return to again and again, is To The Wonder - Terrence Malick's poetic vision of love.  It's pure cinema, full of beautiful imagery, with a timeless symbolic story.  In a year where Ben Affleck dominated the entertainment press, this was the one movie with the audacity to cast him but not let him speak on camera.

The story begins in Europe, as two lovers discover the rapture of throwing themselves into a hurricane of commitment, passion, and bliss.  Ben Affleck is the man, and Olga Kurylenko is the woman.  Her voiceover begins the movie, as she speaks in French of memory and amour.  Malick's camera glides over air, land and sea; across shadows, ice, and mud.  When Affleck brings his love back home to Oklahoma, we see painterly images of an America more exquisite than anything we ever see at the movies.  Small town parades, fast food drive-ins, big American backyards, grocery stores.  Malick finds the spiritual in all of it. 

This is not a typical Hollywood movie.  It's challenging.  It's not easily defined.  It's odd, but never incoherent.  As the imagery shifts from the divine to the terrestrial, new conflicts arise.  Javier Bardem portrays a conflicted Catholic priest, whose melancholy is palpable.  His parishioners pray so he will receive the gift of joy.

Rachel McAdams plays Affleck's former love, who returns to disrupt his new Eden.  But this movie is not really about the plot, because life is not just a story with a beginning, middle and end.  It's a collection of moods, feelings, images.  Lives, perspectives, changing seasons, shifting landscapes.  Timeless struggles.

To The Wonder has been seen by very few people and it's easy to dismiss as pretentious and baffling.  What a shame.  It's filled with more beautiful imagery and soul than any movie this year.  This is big-screen cinema -- not glorified TV or a 90 minute commercial.  To The Wonder is everything great movies aspire to.

Take a chance and check it out.  Give it time, and think about it.  By the end, you'll be lost in thought over your own life.  And not many movies can offer that.