Review of The New World (2005) by Conner R — 16 Mar 2011

Without a doubt, this is this is the greatest representation of the Pocahontas and John Smith story. Not only is it visually beautiful beyond belief, but it also has such a great emotional feeling tagged along that is completely unique.

Terrence Malick's decision to shoot the entire movie hand held and set in deep focus is incredibly risky, but it obviously worked better than even he probably imagined. The beginning portion of the story feels a lot like Herzog's Aguirre in style and visuals, which is probably the best compliment you could pay.

The obvious idea of the movie was to show America in a way that made it looked untouched and full of undiscovered beauty. However, I think above all it is about human nature and what someone or a group of people will do to survive and prosper.

Colin Farrell, Christian Bale and Q'Orianka Kilcher all give great performances and make the movie as good in content as it deserves to be. The drawn out storyline really works here more than in a lot of other "epics" because it attempts to give us a complete story to the legend that we seem to only get snippets of every other time.