Something Old, Something New

Rating: 8/10 (10 December 2005)

A breathtaking landscape populated by looks of discovery. Very few words, just the sensation that something is changing. Terrence Malick is one of my heroes but I had the feeling that, this time, he was expecting too much from me. Within the lushness of the surroundings there is something static, unapproachable, inaccessible. Q'Orianks Kilcher as Pocahontas is, quite simply, sublime but her emotions, and therefore mine, were kept so far removed that it was hard for me to get involved. Slowly, very slowly but surely her story started to creep in under my skin. I floated out of the theatre transported by the visual feast I had been served but frustrated by the numbness it provoked. A Terrence Malick film is a Terrence Malik film and you take it the way it was intended. I will, but I fear I'll be in the minority.