The New World

The New World (Director: Terrence Malick)














Here's a guy who will never be a part of a 2-movie club...maybe even when you extend the parameters to a decade. Terrence Malick, after a promising start in the seventies with Badlands and Days of Heaven, took a 20-year hiatus from directing, breaking from it finally when the excellent The Thin Red Line came out in 1998. So, it's been another 7 years and Malick returns. Screenplay also comes courtesy of Malick.

I don't know of a better director than Malick to direct a movie about discovering a new place. The director has always had a fascination with nature, as you may well be aware from his earlier work. Even in The Thin Red Line, while battles rage (or don't), Malick finds a way to film trees, or birds. Add soft-spoken narration to the nature fetish and the movies he makes become exercises in thought, which of course, is box office poison.

This is the story of John Smith (Colin Farrell) and how he finds love with Pocahontas (Q'Orianka Kilcher), and how that affects the decisions regarding the new Jamestown settlers and the long-established Native Americans. The "Naturals" as Captain Christopher Newport (Christopher Plummer) calls them, want the white men to get the hell out of Dodge come springtime, or there will be war. Meanwhile, the peoples live in harmony, trading and learning, and so forth, while Smith and Pocanhontas get close. As the deadline nears, Smith is torn by duty to the King overseas and his newfound love, and he shuns the good life for professional obligation, even making it seem that he is dead. This opens the door for John Rolfe (Christian Bale) to woo the princess, with an obvious first-love obstacle to overcome.

Malick creates anti-pop entertainment--they are close to documentary feel. Whether that's your cup of tea or not entirely depends on your need for movement in a film. You might get frustrated that people don't talk all the time, they "think" much of the time. But Malick has created a movie of beauty, entertaining on a different plane. It's a movie that probably gets better on more viewings. I recommend it if you're looking for a different kind of movie. Audiences got a close look in 1998 of the difference between pop-art (Saving Private Ryan by Spielberg) and the total opposite (The Thin Red Line). If Ryan is your type of movie, and you feel that's the way movies should be done, and you were bored to tears by Red Line, then you might want to stay away...but...one more thing.

Q'Orianka Kilcher is a luminous presence on film. She has all the makings of a star, and one thing that even the bored can't have a problem with is her. She lights up the screen, is going to be a major heartbreaker (probably already is), and is worth sitting through a 2 1/2 hour movie that will not appeal to everyone just to see.

I really liked it. Look forward to loving it in the future.