Review of The New World (2005) by Rajneel S — 18 Jan 2009

Anyone unfamiliar with the art of director Terrence Malick will find it difficult to penetrate the heady, seemingly disjointed and hugely introspective film such as this - a retelling of the life story of Princess Pocahontas.

Many of Malick's idiosyncracies feature here - stunning, realistic, photography, deliberately slow pacing, jump cuts, segmented editing, characters expositing in poetry delivered via voice-over, sparse dialogue and a seemingly dreamlike flow.

Of course there's nothing wrong with this, but in this film Malick seems to have pushed himself into a hard corner where his work has become unreachable for the mass audience. The film's third act, which justifies Malick's approach, is great, but it comes too little too late for anyone put to sleep by the hard-to-follow plot and lumberingly slow pace.

Collin Farrell is also notably very weak and unendearing in this film to boot. A director's cut is supposed to exist, but this version is distinctively unfriendly for untrained audiences.