Movie Review: The New World

The New World: Torgo approves

The only other Terrence Malick film I've seen is The Thin Red Line. I saw that in the theater and felt pretty much the same way about it then as I feel about The New World now. Both films are visually beautiful. Malick has a wonderful eye for shooting natural beauty. At points in each film, it feels a little like watching National Geographic: the Movie.

Also, in both films, 2.5 hours feels more like 3-4. The movies are slow, plodding, low on dialogue, and generally more interested in creating a mood than a quick-moving story. That's fine. Particularly here, where the story is about Pocahontas (who, interestingly, is never called "Pocahontas" by any character in the movie).

Malick apparently went to great lengths to achieve realism, training all the Native American actors to speak Algonquin, requiring the Jamestown settlers to experience first-hand the colonists' lives, and making Colin Farrell and Christian Bale grow beards.

I enjoy watching Christian Bale, but he has very limited screen time here. Fortunately, he has an interesting role as the second love of Pocahontas, after John Smith (Farrell) leaves to go further exploring. Bale's character, John Rolfe, is surprisingly even-headed when discovering she still loves Smith.

As for Colin Farrell, this is the first of his movies I've seen. He's a mumbler. There's far too much mumbling in this movie as a whole, Farrell especially.

Q'Orianka Kilcher, in her first film role, is quite good as Pocahontas. The movie is, truly, centered on her story. I think she's given the necessary complexity and depth that was missing in my 11th grade AP US History book.

I just picked up a book called "1491," about new theories that the Americas were vastly more populated and "civilized" than previously thought, prior to Columbus. It explores the idea that massive civilizations had tremendously intricate and large-scale agriculture and other systems in place. One thoroughly depressing picture shows areas of South American rain forest, now cleared for cattle grazing, with signs of these huge irrigation projects now visible from the air.

But back to the movie. In the movie, the Algonquin are perhaps overly idealized. Their culture is portrayed perhaps authentically in terms of clothing, art, behavior and language, but still quite as something perfect and noble. Fortunately, the Jamestown settlement is portrayed with what I found to be brutal realism. It's an ugly picture. It's a wonder they survived.

Anyway, the boy is up, so that's the end.