Do you remember the first trailers for Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life? Well the trailer for his new film To the Wonder seems just as confusing and non-committal. The film gathered some very different reviews and reactions when it was shown at the Venice International Film Festival and the trailer doesn't really do much to convince us either way.

It is a Malick film though and it stars Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams, Olga Kurylenko and Javier Bardem, an interesting cast and the potential for a fantastic looking and rich film, but the trailer delivers little to the audience other than stimulating their eyes and ears.

If you were expecting to understand something about the story or perhaps develop some of the characters, this isn't the trailer you're looking for and judging from the negative comments from the VIFF screenings this could be true for much of the rest of the film. A fair bit of the commentary has described the film as a bit of a mess, indeed the screening did provoke a little bit of booing, even Ben Affleck was confused about his role in the film.

As The Hollywood Reporter report from a previous GQ interview Affleck said of the film:

"The experience of it seemed half-crazy in that we didn't really have dialogue, so I didn't really know what was happening...Then I realized that he was accumulating colors that he would use to paint with later in the editing room. My character doesn't really do that much."

Wow, he's selling the film as well as the trailer is.

Here is the trailer for To the Wonder which is released next year, oh but first the plot outline:

After visiting Mont Saint-Michel, Marina and Neil come to Oklahoma, where problems arise. Marina meets a priest and fellow exile, who is struggling with his vocation, while Neil renews his ties with a childhood friend, Jane.

Right, now the trailer, and let's see if it does anything for you.

To me, the trailer To the Wonder lacks any substance and is all about how it looks and sounds, it tells us nothing of the film and if this weren't Terrence Malick I think it would mostly go unnoticed.