The Tragedy of Time Lost

Rating: 1/10 (26 May 2006)

Terence Malick and Michael Cimino should join forces, discuss fantastic, labyrinthine, Quixotic tales they've been spinning in their uber-artistic minds floating somewhere out in Pluto, buy 1,000,000 miles of film (or all the digital camcorders in the world, providing they've embraced the present century and want to make sure they have enough tools to work with), assemble an preposterous cast consisting of every major and minor working actor or actress (and why not, even a couple of skin actors thrown in for fun), get two newcomers to star, and start filming without any concern for the plot or characters or dialogue until what they have is the Tower of Babel of movies, a behemoth so unbelievable in size and scope that it would take 20 years to view in its entirety and would make Cecil B. DeMille's epics seems like 1 minute shorts.
How is it possible to fail so portentously? And this isn't even pretend fail, it's not the kind of you can dismiss -- this is a major train wreck with no survivors, it's failure with a capital F emblazoned in shining red letters over Times Square in front of the Marriott Marquis. It's the kind that needs to be studied under a microscope to see if it's contagious.
Whatever happened to making coherent movies that actually bothered to tell a story and not condescend to the audience in having them look at this thing loosely called a movie with the wide eyes of someone whose never seen moving images on screen? It starts out well -- the arrival of the ships to American shore, the almost hyper-reality that paints a land, untouched, and the quiet appearance of the "Naturals" (a fancy word for the less PC "Indians").
It's just that after the first oh, fifteen minutes, which introduce this mangled, unedited mess, are over, it becomes an exercise in sheer tedium. There is no actual dialogue for the longest time, and the presences of Christopher Plummer -- among a roster of big name actors, all British -- never make more than a vague impression. It's like watching a Seurat painting up close -- everything becomes blurred beyond recognition. It doesn't matter, anyhow -- they're gone before anyone can register they've been there filling up screen time.
Later on, the movie meanders like many of its dainty creeks and streams, showing how John Smith insinuates himself as a member of the Natural's tribe, how he becomes the object of love from the never named Pocahontas (even though she's little more than 12 years old). This is one of the worst exercises in poetics I've seen in a long time. Both characters endlessly warble sweet nothings to each other off-screen as they run through the forests, cavort through the meadows, look longingly at each other, and let the nature envelop them like a nightmarish angora sweater. Battles ensue, people get killed, the Naturals make their violent nature known, Pocahontas gets disowned, Smith disappears, and nary a word of actual dialogue is heard for eternal spaces unless it's to enunciate something of vague meaning, and even then, it's filled with portent and gravitas. So much, it's a wonder the movie doesn't collapse by the sheer force of weight.
And on and on it goes, where it stops, nobody knows. I noticed how time began to slip through my fingers, how my apartment began to smell like sour milk, rampant dejection, and dog-hair. The Discovery Channel would have had a field day analyzing the level of abandonment I had thrown it in. I noticed that my perfectly shaved head was all of a sudden sprouting a scraggly mane like crabgrass. I was dimly aware that my bones were aching, my muscles were cramping, my bowels were roaring -- at least faster than this movie was. And then it occurred to me: I was getting old. I was losing my looks. I was becoming Methuselah with body odor so strong it could be used as a weapon of mass destruction.
Until finally, like manna from heaven, Christian Bale appeared. I figured, he looks like Jesus: is he here to Save Me? He's a whiff of fresh air, a scent of Clean Linen courtesy of Hallmark candles, Archangel Michael in the flesh. But no... I was aware I had 45 more minutes to go, so he morphed into a mirage of water in an endless desert: he, too, began chirping sweet nothings to Pocahontas as she looked unto the sky, opened her hands, and called out to her mother, the Being of All Things. It was then when I shot myself.
It wasn't that bad, actually. I didn't die, so I figured God had a purpose left for me in this Earth that had since seen the Passing of Time, the End of an Era. So I got up, made some coffee, made sure it was extra charged, listened to more incomprehensible warbles, was aware of a thickness in the air and realized Summer was finally here, and when I came back, Pocahontas had croaked, the movie was over -- but not over. It had more scenery. And more. And even more. And, surprise-surprise, More. I then found my inner rage, embraced my indignity, grabbed the remote, yanked the DVD out, and shrieked: "Stick a fork in me -- I am done!" And regained control of my life that had been irrevocably lost for those nine centuries I remained captive under Malick's druggy visuals.
Anyone coming into this movie, either because of curiosity, Colin Farrell, or watching an underage girl who looks like the spawn of Ali McGraw and Joseph Gordon-Hewitt traipse across an expanse of woods and streams as if she was perpetually re-discovering, and surprised at their very existence would have a more entertaining time reading the article on Wikipedia. It's long. But actually, quite exciting.