God is in the contrails

To the Wonder

Crit

Hey, wait a minute: where were Gwyneth and Bob?

OK, here's what I feel reasonably confident saying is going on here: there's love, and there's no-longer-love, and there's simultaneous love and not-love, and maybe there's even love-again-after-not-love, but the last thing we need is some connect-the-dots narrative to try to make sense of all the lovemutations. Right: without a coherent narrative, you don't have a chance of making sense of it. But maybe you're better off not trying.

But don't ask me about the priest's story. It's good to see Javier Bardem in a nonsociopathic role for a change, but how much uncompensated recitation of the text of What to Do During a Crisis of Faith can he endure before he starts to go a little Anton Chigurh on all those poor suffering parishioners?

I'm pretty sure I liked this, liked it quite a bit, but don't expect me to go back tomorrow to make certain. I do know I'm glad to have seen it, though that, of course, is not the same thing. And I encourage others to see it, too, but that might just be to ensure I'm not the only one to have spent two hours wondering where the hell Terrence Malick has taken us.