Director: Terrence Malick
Year Released: 2012
Rating: 3.0
Resplendent companion piece to Malick's The Tree of Life documents the fractured relationship between an American environmental worker (Ben Affleck) and his French lover (Olga Kurylenko) as they return to the States (specifically Oklahoma) and their union begins to fizzle (particulars are left intentionally vague); in town, there's a priest (Javier Bardem) undergoing his own spiritual crisis. Though not as thematically rich or intellectually developed as The Tree of Life, I'm giving Malick the benefit of the doubt with this one as he's trying to abstractly equate falling out of love with another person with falling out of love with God: Affleck is essentially there as a place holder, given little to do but ogle, fondle and roll around with his lovers (Kurylenko and, briefly, Rachel McAdams) while Malick's ever-moving camera shifts, drifts and slides along with their movements and occasionally peeks up to the heavens as if searching for some kind of divine answer (when none is seemingly forthcoming). Malick is clearly privileging aesthetics over content, but the heart is certainly there.
