The New World

Review by: Zak Santucci

ZakSantucci@TheCinemaSource.com

This latest entry into Terence Malick's repertoire is pretty long-awaited after the masterpiece that was The Thin Red Line (to become such a critically-acclaimed war movie the same year as Saving Private Ryan is pretty hardcore). Anyway, remember the absolutely gorgeous landscape shots from The Thin Red Line and all the inner monologue narration and powerfully subtle emotions? That is all put in this movie and probably more so than Malick's previous film, so it should really work. It should.

The basic plot is the well-known story of John Smith (Colin Farrel) and Pocahontas (Q’Orianka Kilcher) (side note: I'm apparently a direct descendant of John Smith, but you don't really care about that). Anyway, John Smith was a settler in Jamestown, he went to the Indians to get some help, was captured and set to be killed, the young and beautiful Pocahontas saves him, they fall in love. After a lot of laying the field and touching each other's arms and faces (because the young actress who played Pocahontas was only 14 at the time, so they couldn't do too much) we get the picture that they are in love. John Smith eventually has to go back to the settlement and everyone gets mad that he abandoned them to play with some skirt in the woods. There's a little war between the settlers and the Indians, John Smith doesn't like how the settlers are acting so he leaves. Pocahontas, thinking Smith is dead, marries John Rolfe played by Christian Bale and goes to England with him.

So it takes awhile before you realize what the story is about. Is it a romance? Is it an artistic view of the unaltered environment of early America? Is it a tale of the settlement? Is it a poetic, emotional tale set against the backdrop of Jamestown? What it really is, (and you don't really get a handle on this until the last half hour) is it is a tale of Pocahontas. Pure and simple it is her story as a Native American who is forced to interact with another culture, and then become part of that culture. The tale of the settlers and her love stories with both John Smith and John Rolfe represent this the best. While you think it's going to be a tale of the Powhatan tribe as an allegory for all Native Americans (and really all innocence) being raped by "the new world" it's not at all. Pocahontas is the one who embraces that world, she's the one rejected by both cultures at one point. This movie conveys to the audience the free-spirited innocence of Pocahontas and how she stays true to that part of her character as

the rest of her life and the world around her changes. Man, writing this synopsis makes me like the movie a hell of a lot better than I did coming out of the theatre.

Here's what I'm going to tell you. This movie's long. It's one of the longest movies I've ever seen as far as how I felt during and after. I saw King Kong a few days before this. Kong's a half an hour longer, and The New World is still the longest movie I've ever seen (if you get my drift). However, I think it's fairly obvious from the previous paragraph, that this movie succeeded at (what I thought) it wanted to do. It was beautifully told, the cinematography is some of the best I've seen, and the acting (especially by newcomer Q'Orianka Kilcher) is great. Christian Bale is a master of subtlety here, and Farrel really succeeds as the total hardass Smith who is sort of tamed by the wild, but loving Powhatan tribe. All the actors playing Powhatan's were great as well (August Schellenberg and a bunch of dudes I didn't know). But, as I said before, it is really long.

I'll level with you, I was terribly tired when I saw this movie, which made it seem longer than it probably was supposed to feel. But, there's good news. There's a bit of controversy insofar as the studio wants to edit somewhere up to 20 minutes of this movie (they could get away with about 40 minutes) in the wide release after the two and a half hour version gets released at select theatres on Christmas Day. Unless you are a HUGE Malick fan, or you really love art house films with little dialogue, not much linear story-telling, and a backseat of plot to camerawork, then wait until the edited version of this. But I have some strong feelings that the edited version of this movie is good. You'll hear cries of "boring", "tedious", and "pretentious" of this movie. It is tedious, but not necessarily boring, and surprisingly accessible for it's style.

All in all, if you didn't like the small amounts of speech and drawn out shots of nature in The Thin Red Line, then don't see this movie"¦ ever. It does that about twice as much and then has these short scenes of exposition and plot development that seem like they don't finish. It's not like the scenes are created for us to understand the action of the movie, but in fact we are reluctantly shown tiny, insignificant snippets of plot just because Malick's smart enough to know nobody's going to enjoy two and a half hours of nothing. But, I do recommend checking out reviews after the wide release

of this movie comes out and finding out if it's a little more acceptable. It's much too mentally draining at the current monotonous length, and unforgivably so.

Movie Grade: C+

Synopsis:

Acclaimed filmmaker Terrence Malick transforms the classic story of John Smith and Pocahontas into a exploration of love, loss and discovery, both a celebration and an elegy of the America that was…and the America that was yet to come. Against a historically accurate Virginia backdrop, Malick has set a dramatized tale of two strong-willed characters – a passionate and noble young native woman and an ambitious soldier of fortune – torn between the undeniable requirements of their civic duty and the inescapable demands of the human heart.