MovieChat Forums > To the Wonder (2013) Discussion > The Ending. . .

The Ending. . .

posted 12 years ago by famousmortimer-2
39 replies | jump to latest

So I'm a little unclear about Marina's fate when the film kicks into its ending montage sequence of frolicking and pensive gazes. Quintana gets transferred. Neil sort of wanders around. Marina however...

There is a shot of her from behind walking down the gate to board a plane. Then later in the same final montage she is in the large back terrace of a new home with a custom waterfall as well as prancing through what looks to be the same Oklahoma woodlands at dusk with two young children.

So was Marina about to fly back to Paris then decided against it and began a proper family with Neil, hence the montage picking up again with the two of them in a newer, bigger, nicer house with children of their own?

I think the film, like all of Malick's, has staggering, redolent visuals, but having Marina's character pulled in all directions only to return to Neil in Oklahoma seems like a cop-out. As wondrous as her realizing it's her destiny and the grace of God that has brought her to this strange, new place, all we get to show her coming to this realization is a shaggy montage.

At least in DAYS OF HEAVEN, we get Richard Gere's motivation for returning for his love: "I never knew what I had with you." Maybe Marina is too ethereal a creature to make any such pronouncement.

[–] JSFound 12 years ago

See, I thought the end she just left to visit her daughter who was still in France. She's still with Neil, but she has a greater appreciation of the work that love is, as the last image of the movie kind of shows. It's the same church they went to at the beginning of the movie and the beginning of the love affair, a time when their love was new and they thought it was going to last forever and be very easy to maintain. The events of the movie prove them wrong but the obstacles, traumas and work they put in all strengthen their love, like they do with many real life couples. So Marina is looking at the church in the end a wiser woman, wiser about life and wiser about love. But still in love.

Tree and New World ending spoilers.....

That's what I thought. But the possibility that I misread the film badly, that it has a darker ending, is nagging at me. I really hope that's not the case, because Malick for all his artistry I believe is an optimist. The New World and Tree end with their unmoored characters having learned something about life and how to live. They have abandoned their initial desires and the unhappiness brought on by those unfulfilled desires and found peace through, not a kind of settling, but a realization that life and the world and others are glorious. So, Pocahontas survives a love affair and being a stranger in a strange land because she has a beloved child and a beloved husband. Jack in Tree learns to live with his brother's death because of the memories of his childhood and imagining of his own death--the entire movie.

So I hope that all Marina goes through she learns from, and that the ending is her happy in love but all the more experienced. And why put the characters through all that pain if they're going to lose all we see them fight for in the movie? That doesn't seem like Malick's style. I believe he wants to make us see that love is work, that it's "not only a feeling" as the priest says, that it's "something higher", that "you shall love"-- and for him to end with a breakup contradicts all of that and his seemingly deep-held philosophy he's pushed in three of his entire run of six movies.

I'm going to see it again tomorrow because its amazing, as typical of a Malick film. I'll find out.

[–] The_Coma-Man 12 years ago

The ending is optimistic: Marina (as well as the priest) realizes that only she herself can make her happy. And look at her: she is dancing, dancing, and she is a great favorite. And happy.

[–] jmillerdp 12 years ago

It's interesting, but I'm reading this thread and thinking "Huh? What?"

I just saw the film yesterday, and vaguely remember the images being discussed, but I really don't know what happened in the ending.

I saw the screencaps posted, but was wondering if someone could post more, including images from all the shots in the ending. Using the Photoshop Shadows/Highlights tool to boost the shadows brighter would be good. Thanks in advance!

Thinking about it, after spending almost two hours with this movie and these characters, I find it odd that Mr. Malick had such a quick, undefined ending. I certainly don't expect, or really want, him to provide us with concrete answers as to what happens to these characters. But, taking a little more time, and providing clearer images would have been nice.

There probably aren't going to be a lot of people seeing this film. At my theater, there were 12 people in our auditorium at the very-busy 4:40 p.m. Saturday showing. Meanwhile, "Mud" was sold out, and the next showing was so full that they canceled another movie's 7 p.m. showing and put the film in a second auditorium. But, of those of us who saw the film, there are quite a few of us who were impressed! And, we obviously care enough to be discussing the film.

Plus, those of us who are Malick fans, and by extension, defenders, would like to have a little better idea of what happened to the people we came to care about in this film.

Seems kind of reasonable!

"I. Drink. Your. Milkshake! [slurp!] I DRINK IT UP!" - Daniel Plainview - "There Will Be Blood"

[–] nhoj441 12 years ago

Very early in the film, I think possibly one of the first scenes of Marina in the US, we see her striding confidently across a field in a red dress and obviously feeling great. The voice-over from Neal is something to the effect of "my hope my joy, how I loved you". So the stage is set as a remembrance. And so it's also set up to be backwards in the sense that it's powerful in that way at the beginning and proceeds to slowly fall apart from there. So they just walk away at the end, whereas a more commonly portrayed love story begins with the protagonists as strangers, they meet, love grows, something happens to distance them, but they inevitably find each other just before the triumphant ending. So I suppose what Malick has tried to do is to contrast the falling off of feeling in the core love story with a gradual recognition of the overall power of love in its many forms in our lives, which is a very powerful recognition to attain. 1John4:4

A thing of beauty is a thing forever. JK/MLG

[–] renegade_rhino 11 years ago

brilliant and insightful analysis! Thanks for sharing!

[–] jab670 11 years ago

Oh, I think I'll steal that when I explain the movie to people.

[–] on3gin 12 years ago

I am surprised that so many posters hung around to the ending to be able to comment on it.

[–] jimi99 11 years ago

I just watched it for the second time, and I think the whole film is a flashback to their relationship, until the final shot which shows Marina still a free spirit child of nature but still thinking about what happened and what might have happened. When she tells Neil that she wants to keep his name, as she is leaving forever, that seals the deal on how deep her love was and is. But like her Italian friend tells her, she is still young and beautiful and will go on. We see her going on, happy and messy and sad. I was confused about the small child at the end but thought it might have been a dream of hers (and/or his) that did not come true.

"SEDAGIVE?"

[–] GloriousSunrise 11 years ago

I agree, there are a lot of hints scattered throughout the film. Early on we hear her saying she would have stayed if he had asked her to, several moments where it's obvious she loves him passionately. The ending is so poignant because we see her in the fields smiling, looking like she's full of joy and happiness with the sun shining on her. And then in an instant she's brought back to reality, and all the joy disappears from her face, along with the light from the sun, and we see a bleak shot of Mont Saint-Michel, "The Wonder."

Anyone who's been in enraptured with someone, only to have it fall apart beyond repair, can relate to this feeling. Fantasizing about what could have been, the happiness that would have come with spending your life with the person you love, and for a brief moment or two immersing yourself in that dream and experiencing a glimpse of the happiness you want so badly. Then reality sets back in, darker and bleaker than the life you imagined, where you know that the future will haunt you with memories that you can never have, that will only exist within your imagination. That's what makes the ending (and the entire film really) so heartbreaking and emotional to so many people because it's something almost everyone goes through at some time or another. It brought me to tears because it took me back to the first time I fell in love, having it fall apart and having my dream of spending my life with this person shattered.

[–] Solistca 11 years ago

I have a hard time nailing down a definitive answer to the question of what happened at the end to Marina and Neil. Malick has always seemed more interested in our connection to the Divine (Love, Grace, Nature, the Universe, god/God) and much like Emerson, knows that we each have a glimmer (spark) of the Divine within us.

I think Malick was more concerned about each characters loss of the Divine and absence of Self-Reliance that he chose to give focus to. Marina and Neil's love gave them both a glimpse of the Divine in their rapture. However, the passion fades and it turns into a longing that they try so hard to find again. But ultimately, our connection to that greater Love (emphasis on capital L) can only be an extension of Being -- that connection with all things.

The Pocahontas/Pvt. Witt character in this film is almost conspicuously absent unless you remember the Church janitor. He feels the light through everything. He briefly shows it's not through a church, vestments or sacrament, and not through a brief flare of love with another, it's through life/nature and the strive to BE.

That glimmer that all three characters experience and mourn the loss of stops them from moving forward and causes so much pain and suffering. Ultimately, I think they don't find the Divine again until they realize that they need to search-transend their quandaries and finally soar with or without the other To the Wonder.

Do Marina and Neil live out their lives together or separately? Does the Priest ever find his joy and connection to God again? My first viewing made me think that Neil explored the options of divorce and finally found the Priest. They helped each other move forward and ultimately Marina left to get her daughter. I took the girl in the scene in question to be Marina's daughter and the boy as their son together. I could be right or wrong but ultimately it should be up to the viewer.

This quote from Emanuel Lubezki helped me realize that much of the interpersonal relationship was left entirely to our own creation. Our minds made of it what we wanted with some guidance,

We want to show things that happen and then capture them before they disappear. Again, this is a form of filmmaking that directly connects to the content of the story. The movie has very little plot; it’s more of a contemplation, and we’re always looking for the moments that editors normally throw out. In many cases they’re the moments before and after the dramatic scenes that make up most movies. I don’t want to say that those moments feel more real, but they affect me and I relate to them as an audience member. By leaving out the conventional scenes that explain things, the film invites the audience to create some of the story themselves, and I like that.

It's that last line, "By leaving out the conventional scenes that explain things, the film invites the audience to create some of the story themselves..." that makes me believe we may all be correct.

I think Malick primarily wanted us to see our own experience of this relationship in order to understand the need to step back, change angles and transcend our experience to touch the Wonder. This is how we move forward.

[–] dvalukis 9 years ago

Wow. Ummmm. That's kind of a really good post.

I think one of my more memorable moments from the film that encapsulate's what Lubezki was speaking to was:

Towards the end, middle-to-end, the priest is asking where Christ/God hides himself and asks in what way is he revealed. Or in what "understandable" form does He take up? How do we understand Him?

And towards the end of this dialogue a static shot of Neil looking out a window is shown. You expect it to hold and then out of nowhere it dips quickly to the floor to show Affleck's shadow. A wave of "oh *beep*!" came crashing over me.

To Lubezki's credit, the movie wasn't asking me to see anything there. I wasn't expecting to "feel" anything in that very brief shot. But I felt like that shot was telling me that - We can only know His shadow (Whoever the *beep* He is).

And once again, like Lubezki mentioned, it's like a 2-hour contemplation. I think this movie does well for people who like to entertain thoughts, throw them out, come up with new ones, and throw those out.

I thought it was a beautiful movie, but I was missing a concrete understanding of the larger ideas of it. I wouldn't say missing, I'd have thought the same of the film either way, but your post was really insightful.

[–] famousmortimer-2 11 years ago

This is a really thoughtful and eloquent post. Seeing the film as a meditation on the divine - how passion unlocks it for us, how the fading of passion causes it to vanish from us is a wonderful way to look at it. That the characters are left only with longing captures the chilly relations and inability to reconnect perfectly.

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