Cinematic Poetry

Rating: 10/10 (18 January 2007)

Terrence Malick, the director of The New World, is known for not rushing his projects and concentrating on the quality and the details. As a result he has directed only four motion pictures over his 30-year career but each one of them has with time gathered a loyal and strong following.
Starring Colin Farrell (Phone Booth, Alexander), Christian Bale (Equilibrium) and the young actress Q'Orianka Kilcher, The New World tells the well-known story of Pocahontas. British settlers arrive in Virginia to establish a colony called Jamestown. Relatively soon they run into troubles with their food supplies and the natives and decide to send Captain Smith to a nearby village to try to negotiate a trade agreement. While in the village Smith and the youngest daughter of the chief, Pocahontas, fall in love despite the chief's caveat. Soon after Smith's return to Jamestown, he is sent on a faraway mission, leaving Pocahontas alone. After a while John Rolfe arrives and also falls in love with her. In the end Q'Orianka, as well as the viewer, is torn between the loves of these two equally respectable men.
Everything about The New World is extraordinary. One can see that it was filmed with great passion, dedication and pure artistic interest. The direction of the movie is not completely clear and unambiguous. Some short parts of the otherwise continuous script are skipped and replaced with genuinely alluring shots of nature. The actors' first-rate performances reinforced with the aesthetic direction, careful editing and the cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki (Children of Men, Y Tu Mamá También) truly bring the characters to life and you feel their emotions as well as your own. Parts of the film are narrated by the three leads. The narration differs from conventional in such that it does not work as a plot device but rather comprises deep and profound dictums describing the characters' emotional state. One of the greatest technical achievements of this film is that contrary to other films, in which the music is edited to fit the scenes, the music was mixed first and then the scenes were cut to fit the score. The soundtrack is mostly classical music including the ingenious "Das Rheingold" by Richard Wagner. The scenery is mostly pure untouched nature but they also built a copy of Jamestown, canoes, natives' shacks and a lot of other props; all real and out of authentic material. This goes to show just how much affection and love was put into The New World.
Audiences and critics are much divided by this film. This is most likely because The New World requires a lot of attention and if you are not used to sitting in a chair staring intensely at the screen for more than two hours you will not get much out of it. The New World may have not received the Academy Award it deserved nor was it a big hit at the box office but everyone involved in making of this film should be proud for they have proved that motion pictures can be art too.