Wonder is a movie directed by Terrence Malick and starring Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko and Rachel McAdams. This is a very unorthodox romance in that there is really not much romance in it at all. Instead, the movie takes a look at how romance evolves into something else in a real life relationship. It looks at how people fall in love and in the beginning, when they meet, there is a spark -- that romantic feeling. But reality soon sets in and the two individuals must cope with one another's personalities, their faults and failings and beliefs (or lack of belief, which is the case for Ben's character through much of the film). The movie also focuses on a fourth character played by Javier Bardem, who is a Catholic priest in the movie struggling to make sense of his own role in the world as he tries to preach the Bible to his community but finds few takers. The movie weaves these characters' lives together by using Olga's character as the main subject. The movie begins with her narrating her feelings to the audience as she rides on a train with Ben through the French countryside. They have clearly just met and she is describing how he has brought her back to life through the romantic feelings that he has inspired in her.
What I like about this movie is the way it reveals characters' thoughts and feelings. There is very little dialogue in the movie, which is fine by me because I actually like silent movies. This movie is not silent -- there is a lot of
The characters act like models for much of the movie, though. The
narrative is not typical or straightforward. Instead, the film flows almost like a dream, with scenes connected in a non-linear way even as a story unfolds linearly.
The movie is very
artistic so it is impossible to say that there any inconsistencies or errors in it. Although, having watched this movie several times, I have noticed one editing error -- it occurs early in the film when Olga and Ben's characters (I refer to them this way because they are never given names in the movie -- so that should tell you what kind of movie this is) are walking across a bridge in Paris. Ben's character places a lock on the bridge which is supposed to symbol his love for Olga's character. She bends over the bridge and looks through the railing and is supposed to look at the lock but she seems to notice the camera and looks directly at it before looking back at the lock. I never noticed this until I saw the movie for the fourth or fifth time and now whenever I see this scene I always laugh because it pulls me out of the movement and flow of the sequence for a moment.
The movie is not based on a book but is inspired in part by a character in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. For this reason, the film is identified as a "Brothers K. Production" in the opening…
