Review of The New World (2005) by Markb. — 23 Jan 2006

Complaining that the films of Terrence Malick (Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line) are exquisitely photographed but frustratingly elliptical, oblique, emotionally distant and seem even longer than their running times is like griping that Stanley Kubrick made movies about dehumanization that were themselves obsessively drained of humanity, or that Quentin Tarantino endlessly blends ultraviolence with pop-culture jokiness, or that Uwe Boll makes really crappy horror movies based on video games.

You knew all this going in, so if you're not prepared to accept it, go see something else. (Then again, there's Woody Allen, who at the precise moment you've decided you've seen so many lookalike examples of the typical Woody Allen movie that seeing one more would be completely superfluous, blindsides you.

) However, Malick's typically beautiful but deliberately not completely accessible meditation on the 17th century Jamestown settlements, their inevitable effects on the lives of the Native Americans (fittingly referred to as "naturals") living there, and John Smith's and John Rolfe's relationships with 14-year-old Pocahontas (not referred to by name until the film's closing credits) doesn't dig as deep as you'd expect Malick to: from the early shot of one of the newly arrived settlers spitting on the new territory as his first act before stepping on land, Malick's observations about White settlers irreversibly altering and destroying an innocent way of life are nothing really new, however vaild they might be.

That said, he frequently expresses these truisms in highly imaginative ways (typically of Malick, even the weather is affected by the English arrivals, and if you think women's high-heeled shoes are uncomfortable and pointless on concrete and tile, wait'll you see the Europeanized Pocahontas try to navigate them on mud.

) Heavily narrated films often don't work, but Malick's use of multi-character voiceovers in lieu of very much dialogue is logical because this is a film that deals with two peoples who may slowly learn one another's languages, but never fully understand the cultural constants behind them.

And Malick stages a ferociously effective battle scene that's every bit the equal of Michael Mann's vivid, visceral work in The Last of the Mohicans; both sequences can stand as among the most gripping and powerful sequences of their kind ever filmed.

That said, The New World, largely because there's nothing really new about its theme, is in large part a muddy slog and arguably the weakest of Malick's four films--and why, after being so detailed and deliberate in his pacing of the Jamestown sequences, does Malick seem to rush through Pocahantas' time in England and the circumstances leading to her very early death? The New World is, by far, much less of a butt-number than this season's OTHER coffee-table movie, Rob Marshall's Memoirs of a Geisha, largely because of most of the acting: Christian Bale (The Machinist, Batman Begins) is effectively sensitive and sympathetic as Rolfe, Pocahontas' eventual husband, and Christopher Plummer (The Insider, Syriana) seems biologically incapable of giving a bad performance.

Best of all is Q'Orianka Kilcher, the teen chosen to play the pivotal role of Pocahontas: I don't know if she inherently understood all of Malick's nuances or if he had to film dozens of takes a la Kubrick and splice together the best results, but Kilcher seems so instinctive and on the money that I would guess mostly the former.

On the other hand, Colin Ferrell, who was quite effective as the Greek military leader in Oliver Stone's much-maligned Alexander, is monotonously sullen as Pocahontas' first and true love, Smith; whether his character is called upon to be angry, rebellious or deeply, rapturously in love, Ferrell comes across in every scene like he's suffering from a perpetual pinched nerve.