The problem for these critics might be that Malick has finally cast his critical gaze—always until now reserved for examining America's past—on the present day, making the film scan as more disposable. The movie does diverge significantly from his past work in large part because of its contemporary setting, but I'd argue that's a good thing. Malick has challenged himself not to look backwards, and To the Wonder is both about and for a different generation of Americans. Those who grew up with Malick are right to feel a bit left out, although they are missing a fascinating shift in the great director's career.

As the film opens, Neil (Ben Affleck), an American businessman, has fallen in love with Marina (Olga Kurylenko), a young, beautiful Parisian, on his trip to Europe. These scenes bring Neil and Marina to Mont St. Michel—known as the "Wonder of the West"—where their love takes on ancient proportions under the spell of the island's history and natural beauty. Enchanted by the moment, Neil invites Marina and her daughter to live with him in Oklahoma, and we are suddenly transported to modern day, where contemporary American culture plays the role of the oppressor previously occupied in the Malick oeuvre by war (The Thin Red Line), colonialism (The New World), and abusive fathers (The Tree of Life).

In each of his films, there is an innocent, child-like narrator to guide us through the interplay of his recurring elements. In Badlands, it was Sissy Spacek's naïve American teenager, and in The Thin Red Line, it was Jim Caviezel's runaway WWII soldier. Marina is the requisite innocent in To the Wonder. Like many Europeans, she and her daughter are at first seduced by America—they are amazed at the endless rows of canned goods at a supermarket. But her acceptance of suburban culture is not to be taken too seriously; Marina is a woman without roots, and she mostly behaves like a child playing hooky, running through the wheat fields and licking the rain off a tree branch. Still, it is not long before the culture whose novelty at first fascinates her reveals its dark underbelly.

Neil, an environmental engineer, seems stressed by a vague development at work; it involves some kind of pollutant in the water supply. He brings his stress home, where Marina is failing to live up to his American notions of female domesticity. The house is soon filled with tension. Eventually and without a clear reason ("Something is missing," her daughter whispers to her at one point), he allows mother and child to return to Paris without him, and he strikes up another relationship with an old flame (Rachel McAdams), who has recently been widowed.

Malick seems to have grasped something about a generation of young adults who have not yet grown up. Neil has never learned to control his emotions, and his stoicism is punctuated by fits of rage; Marina's childishness is at first intoxicating but soon becomes a burden on their relationship. These characters push and pull against each other over the course of the film—and Malick's camera is in constant motion around them—so that the struggle never ends. As they seek to transcend their material existences—whether by climbing the steps of an ancient monastery or a cheap Oklahoma motel—their perpetual efforts to self-actualize should resonate deeply with a cohort of young Americans struggling to mature in a culture that values youth and an economic system that was broken by their parents' generation.