Texas Art & Film's Dr. Donna Copeland's Film Reviews & Features
 
Picture
      This is classic Malick—an abstract impressionistic treatise about the nature and wonder of love.  The experience of love is rebirth, hope for a new life, being at one with another, and being at peace, like calm, still waters.  But love is also a process, and like nature has its bounty and gifts of life, but along with it, devastation and destruction.  It can be very steady and predictable, as well as disappointing.  It can be like a tornado ripping through a house and leaving it completely empty.  It can be as polluted as our earth with the poison of deceit and faithlessness.  By juxtaposing scenes of nature with scenes of romantic relationships, Malick graphically brings these points home.
      The love story itself is segmented, with the male character, Neil (Ben Affleck) as a strong, silent figure who imparts feelings of love, warmth, and care—like the sunshine.  But like the sunshine, he can go behind the clouds, darken, and bring on a sudden storm.  We see him at first with Marina (Olga Kurylenko), a French woman with a 10 year-old girl.  We see them in the first bursts of love, dancing and playing incessantly.  But like the changing weather (the sun does not commit to an appearance every day), Neil cannot commit to marriage, so Marina and her daughter return to Paris.
     Love blooms again for Neil when he becomes involved with Jane (Rachel McAdams), and again the sunny days of love follow.  But then, he decides to end this love in order to take back Marina, who is floundering on her own in Paris.  So like the seasons, love comes and goes and comes back again in different forms.  Inevitably, when the storms come, the relationship must be strong like a house to withstand the turmoil.  Love is ephemeral; we all need it and chase after it, but it’s hard to hold onto.  It requires commitment that we are sometimes unwilling to make.  As noted in the film, when love turns to hate, it becomes a cruel war.
      Interspersed into these musings, is a priest (Javier Bardem), who is seeking God’s love as earnestly as the three main characters are seeking it in each other.  Similar questions and feelings are expressed to God as Marina, the narrator of the film, expresses to Neil.  Where are you?  Why don’t you speak to me?  Where do you go for so long? It’s so hard to hold onto you.
Malick’s ending to these musing is to ask God to show us how to seek Him (Love).  And he thanks him as the “love that loves us.”  The last scene looks to me like a castle in the distance that beckons us on.

Grade:  A


Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.