Been there, done that

Rating: Null/10 (6 May 2008)

Captain John Smith and his men erect a small fort at the edge of a forest, claiming Virginia in the name of the British Empire. They have hopes of finding gold and wealth, but after months of living in this harsh environment, gradually begin to die of disease and starvation.
Seeking help for his men, John Smith (Colin Farell) ventures off into the forest with a small band of sailors. He hopes to ask the Algonquian tribes for assistance, but is instead captured by the Powahtan warriors. The Powahtans take him to their village, where he spends several months living amongst the natives. It is here that Smith falls in love with Pocahontas, a local girl.
In typical Malick fashion, Smith initially romanticises the native villagers. "They have no jealousy," he says, "no sense of possession". Smith sees them as "beautiful" and "perfect", devoid of "greed", "pride" or "envy". But when the natives attack the English fort, Smith's idealistic view of them changes and he abandons Pocahontas.
Enter John Rolfe (Chris Bale), a British plantation owner. Rolfe falls in love with Pocahontas and takes her back to England. She journey's with him to this New World, where she meets the Queen, has a baby and reminisces about the past. The film then ends.
The first half hour of Terrence Malick's fourth film is brilliant. He captures the energy of Colonization and contrasts it with the confusion of the natives, as they spy upon these white skinned Gods.
Unfortunately it's all downhill from here, as virtually everything done in this film Malick has done before and done better. The romance between Smith and Pocahontas is never convincing, lacking the chemistry seen between the leads in "Badlands" and "Days of Heaven". The duo also never share any substantial or interesting moments together and no attempt is made to show how the two "aliens" understand each another and communicate. Instead, they simply lock eyes and roll in the grass.
Thematically, there's also nothing new. All of Malick's films feature characters returning to the pastoral realm of Henry Thoreau. They run from civilisation and attempt to forge a natural paradise. This idyllic haven then withers as either disillusionment creeps in or civilisation encroaches.
Here, Malick has Smith fleeing from the "New World" (Europe) and finding "peace" amongst the natives. But this primitive world loses its appeal as a sort of sickness and disenchantment begins to creep in. A similar change takes place in "The Thin Red Line", when a character called Witt re-evaluates his perceptions regarding local islanders. In contrast, Pocahontas is taken to the "new world" of England, but she promptly feels stymied and hungers for her "old world" back in Virginia.
But Malick never delves into anything beyond the superficial. He fails to examine the effects of Colonization on the natives, never effectively compares the "old world" with the "new" and fails to look at how a real multi-cultural relationship/romance would work.
But the biggest flaw in the film is the poor choice of music. Malick's ethereal imagery requires great music to act as the "glue", binding the images together. His earlier films had iconic scores and memorable voice over narrations. But everything in "The New World" is muted and second-rate (Horner's brilliant score was rejected due to editing problems), leaving nothing to really drive the picture forward. Couple this with a rather bland colour palette (the film is all browns and drab skies) and you have a film that simply lacks the sensuality of Malick's previous films.
So "The New World" is ultimately a creaky rehash of the usual Malick themes. He's made the same film four times, and attempts here to keep things fresh by using only subjective shots and an understated anti-narrative style. The idea here is to strip the film down so that it becomes a string of fleeting memories held together by ambient music, but it just doesn't work as well as his other efforts. "The Thin Red Line" covered all this stuff before and in far greater detail, whilst Malick protégé David Green and other sensualists like Mann, Kar Wai Wong and Lynch have gone on to match Malick's sensual aesthetic.
Malick originally studied philosophy and translated a book by German philosopher Martin Heidegger. His films all deal with the same philosophical ideas (a mix of Heidegger and Taoism), his characters all in search of an Edenic new world which seems lost but actually doesn't exist. As such, his characters all detach themselves from society and create Donnean islands unto themselves. They create their own morals, their own laws and live within their own private Edens. But Malick and Heidegger view human society as being no less natural than nature, and so Malick constantly contrasts the Romantic ideal of man-in-harmony-with-nature, with the Post Enlightenment ideal of man ordering or manipulating nature.
For an elaboration of this philosophy, see my review of "Badlands". Suffice to say, Malick's "romantics" are searching for some mythical wholeness which is unattainable precisely because all pre-enlightenment myths of wholeness have been displaced by the modern discovery of a plurality of worlds. The tensions of Malick's films, however, arise from the fact that the modern world which allows for all, also allows for nothing. As plurality is threatening, the Social Order attempts to reduce this threatening plurality - and the sceptical undermining of knowledge and morality it entails - to one universal world again by means of conquest and domination. And that is the paradox Malick explores: the Post Enlightenment world which preaches multiplicity but seeks to impose its own unity, its own singular Law (imperialism/colonialism/the Big Other), and the Romantic Ideal which promises some spiritual wholeness, but delivers only the lawless, malevolence of Nature.
8/10 - Malick's first failure. Take a look at an amazing book by Harry Thompson called "This Thing of Darkness" which touches upon similar themes and so much more.