David Jeffers for SIFFblog.com

Rating: 9/10 (24 January 2006)

Wednesday January 18, 7:00pm Metro Cinemas, Seattle
Opens Friday January 20
"All is perfect. Let me be lost. You flow through me like a river."
The New World at its heart is the tale of an exceptional young woman and a legend in American mythology. The curious pondering of her existence in harmony with earth, sea and sky is profound and spiritual. "You are our Mother. We rise out of the soul of you." Oddly, her name (Pocahontas) is never spoken. The film reveals her idyllic world at the point of European discovery and she becomes a metaphor for paradise corrupted. The use of first person narrative with breathtaking visual montage is extraordinary: The river below mirrors an endless swath of migratory birds in flight, then, in the throws of new love she stands at the waters edge as a bolt of lightning pierces the twilight. Tension builds between rival factions as a sliver of moon appears long enough to reveal what is actually an eclipse, followed by an empty canoe, adrift, a fire burning at its center, preceding her despair and the carnage of battle. . A rough spot or two in the editing simply reveals the filmmakers endless tinkering. Once again Terrance Malick has created an operatic work of nearly unbearable beauty.