Actor: Barry Pepper
Film: “To the Wonder”
How Badly Was His Role Affected: Excised completely
Bitterness Level: ?/10 lemons
What Happened & How He Reacted: We really have no clue at all how Barry Pepper took the news of being dropped from the film, but in interview with Collider from 2010, he certainly claimed to have loved the experience of shooting as Father Barry, a priest seen in a few set photos walking alongside Javier Bardem‘s Father Quintana, even if he never got a script. “I’m being absolutely honest with you in saying that I don’t know what the story is about. All I know is my involvement, which is a small chapter within the film, which to me was absolute joy to work with him on that level because it was so free and so unlike anything I’d ever experienced,” he explained. “Never been involved in a project where you’re not handed a concrete screenplay, but to me it was just like floating down a river. You know, you really just had to go with it, or else…You just really had to float because it was such a free process that if you fought it, you’d just start drowning.”
Actor: Jessica Chastain
Film: “To the Wonder”
How Badly Was Her Role Affected: Excised completely
Bitterness Level: 0/10 lemons
What Happened & How She Reacted: It would be pretty churlish of Jessica Chastain to complain too loudly about Malick’s treatment of her, since it was “The Tree of Life” that proved her career breakthrough. And Chastain is anything but churlish, so we’ve not heard a peep from her about her “To the Wonder” role’s disappearance after the fact. In any case, rather like Michael Sheen‘s experience, her involvement was very casual from the beginning, “What happened was I was working on ‘The Help‘ with Sissy Spacek,” Chastain said, when we spoke to her in December 2011 “and her husband is Jack Fisk who does all of [Malick’s] production design. And so they were over there in Oklahoma and we were in Mississippi, and I called him one time I was in my trailer… he just said ‘Hey, why don’t you come visit?’, because I love that whole crew, they’re like family to me. So I said okay, we planned this trip, I was going to come visit, and then, right before, I started getting calls from the producers that they were organising my airfare, and I was like ‘Well, why are you guys paying?’ And then two days before I got there, I got another call from a producer who was like ‘Would you mind playing a part in the film?’ and of course I would do anything on any of [Malick]’s films, I would work on the crew of his films, I love working with him.” But already then she had her doubts as to whether she’s made the final cut. “Because it happened like that I don’t think I’m going to end up in the movie. I really just think I was there, three days, acting with Ben Affleck, and I don’t know what the movie is about, I don’t know what my part is and you know, my guess is I’m probably not in the film.”
In fact, even those who remain the leads in the film have their niggles. Olga Kurylenko, while breathless and effusive in her admiration for Malick, lamented recently “My favorite scene is cut! And it’s not one, there were like 10 of them. I did a lot of confession scenes with Javier [Bardem]. That was dialogue! Terry didn’t mind me speaking then! I loved those scenes. And there were more fights with Ben, horrible, terrifying fight scenes.” And the changes have apparently altered her character’s portrayal significantly. “From what we shot, it was clear to me that Marina was meant to be quite hysterical; if he’d kept [all those shots] in, it would have been a very different view on this woman.”
And her co-star Ben Affleck, while undoubtedly remaining central to the film remarked: “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… It was kind of a wash for me in terms of learning something as an actor, because Terry uses actors in a different way — he’ll [have the camera] on you and then tilt up and go up to a tree, so you think, ‘Who’s more important in this — me or the tree?’ But you don’t ask him, because you don’t want to know the answer.”
Malick is of course already in production on two future films, and next up after “To the Wonder” will be “Knight of Cups.” With Malick himself reportedly saying to Affleck that “Just more and more I’m more interested in silences,” will we be back here, furiously updating this post prior to that film’s release? Nah, we’re sure the svelte, low-rent, minimal cast, which includes Natalie Portman, Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Teresa Palmer, Joel Kinnaman, Imogen Poots, Antonio Banderas, Isabel Lucas, Wes Bentley, Joe Manganiello, Nick Offerman, Freida Pinto, Nicky Whelan, Shea Whigham, Michael Wincott, Thomas Lennon, Ryan O’Neal and Katia Winter have nothing to worry about.