A pretentious, bloated travesty

Rating: 1/10 (22 December 2005)

Already this film is beginning to generate advance buzz that suggests that it's a poetic masterpiece.
The fact is, anyone peddling that point of view has either not seen it or is blinded by the fact that it is directed by a man who made a very good film a very long time ago.
What the film has in its favour is the kind of cinematography that automatically gives any film a professional sheen that can dazzle the most intelligent reviewers. However, that's the full extent of the positives.
The script is so thin, so hackneyed and yet so portentous that it is difficult to believe it is the work of a man regularly venerated as a genius. In all its characteristics it most resembles the witterings of an angst-ridden teenager. Yawn as all three major characters spend more time speaking in voice-over than dialogue! Look confused as you attempt to keep up with Farrell's ever changing accent! Try not to laugh as Pocohontas impersonates a deer in a field as Farrell looks on with adoring eyes! Try not to get annoyed as you realise that Malick has cast the ugliest actors he could find to play the baddies! Boggle as you realise how trite the voice-overs are! Fall asleep as you give up expecting the film to become meaningful after two hours and just sit there waiting for it to end.
The clumsiness of its visual and linguistic imagery has never been exceeded in any film I have seen in thirty years. It is patronising, stupid and vacuous at every turn. After one character compares human beings to trees, Malick cuts for thirty seconds to... a tree! When Pocohontas is presented to King James she is presented along with... caged animals from America (can you see what he's aiming at?)! When Pocohontas is unhappily reunited with Farrell it takes place in a perfectly clipped and bordered English garden (do you think he's trying to compare the American wilderness with the Old World's control over nature?).
I do not expect to see a worse film in a long time, and if, as seems likely, it goes on to win any kind of award or plaudits from reviewers, it will be the worst case of The Emperor's New Clothes ever to be inflicted on the film industry.