SO GLAD I DON'T HAVE TO SEE*: To The Wonder

"Most of the moments in the film are interstitial; the story is conjured and suggested rather than shown, and the emotions are evoked and induced rather than performed... Malick constructs the story as the love story, as the story of stories, as a primordial archetype realized in practical and even familiar places, and he films his unnamed characters more or less without dialogue.... Malick avoids many of the ordinary particulars of a couple’s life—why are they together, what drives them apart... Viewers with expectations, or, rather, prejudices regarding what constitutes a movie—regarding scripts, acting, and psychology—are bound to be confounded by “To the Wonder.” Malick has little interest in the psychology of his characters—in fact, it’s hard to call them characters. And the actors who bring them to life have a very difficult job, which they do remarkably... Affleck, a solid and muscular performer, manages to render himself diaphanous" — Richard Brody, The New Yorker 

* An occasional column devoted to those films, books or art works which, by virtue of the praise they elicit from certain quarters, would probably bring greater pleasure unseen than seen, unread than read. A column, in other words, devoted to the idea that there is too much culture, or at any rate too many people making one feel small for not sharing their cultural tastes, and moreover, that the link between appreciating art and living a useful life remaining doubtful, not to say diaphanous, one might be better off having a cup of tea, or a sexual encounter, or a conversation.