Credit: www.amazon.com
The Director
Terrence Malick
The Cast
Colin Farrell………Captain John Smith
Christopher Plummer……….Captain Christopher Newport
Christian Bale……….John Rolfe
August Schellenberg……….Powhatan
Wes Studi……….Opechancanough
David Thewlis……….Captain Edward Wingfield
Matthew Knight……….Young Francis Ouimet
Q’Orianka Kilcher……….Pocahontas
John Savage……….Savage
Noah Taylor……….Selway
Ben Chaplin……….Jehu Robinson
The Movie
The New World tells the romance between Captain John Smith and the Indian princess Pocahontas, but without the singing raccoon found in the Disney cartoon. While the film wants to be historically accurate, it is not viewer friendly. If you haven’t read a book about Jamestown, you might constantly be asking questions about what’s happening and why. The first question is why we encounter Capt. Smith chained up in the ship’s brig? How exactly does a ship’s captain get busted? There’s a lot of these non-explained moments in this film that require you to recall bygone days in American History class. Who wants to read a book before seeing a movie? Doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose of going to the theater instead of the library?
Director Terrence Malick has crafted a film that can’t decide if it’s a very long trailer or a perfume commercial. The moments never unfold. They jump quickly as if this is a teaser for an upcoming HBO series. There’s no chance of being lost in the moment. Rarely does the narrative play out in real time. Even the big moment when Pocahantas throws herself down to stop Capt. Smith from getting his brains beaten out with an early Sledge-O-Matic seems uneventful. Nothing builds. Eventually scenes dissolve into Malick’s trademarked long beauty shots of nature with characters giving disembodied voice overs in quasi-poetics that makes me anticipate Pocahontas cracking open her Chanel #5.
Speaking of the Princess, Q’Orianka Kilcher knows how to charm the screen. If there’s only one reason to watch this film, it’s her performance. We can buy her role as a woman who meets the new visitors and becomes a part of them. It’s easy to feel sad as she loses her deerskin and has to wear shoes. However there’s one thing that can’t be sold. This is supposed to be a romantic film, but it’s hard to root for a teenager to hook up with Colin Farrell. It’s not going to end well. She’ll wake up alone in bed with whiskey and cigarettes soaked into the pillows and intimate videos leaked onto the internet. My date while watching this film kept complaining that Capt. Smith was a pedophile which isnt’ good since this film isn’t trying to be Lolita . She felt that their “affair” was too mushy to be taken seriously. It came off as the type of love depicted in a Calvin Klein Obsession campaign.
There is no question to how beautiful this film looks. Emmanuel Lubezki has captured the wilds of coastal Virginia so each frame resembles a page in a cinematic coffeetable book. But that quality becomes a crutch as it takes the burden away from the movie having to engage the audience on a gut level. Contrary to Richard Roeper’s blurb on the box, this is not “the best historical epic romance since Titanic.” This is a romantic film for viewers in love with their own genius. Odds are against you getting laid after showing this DVD. Instead you’ll have to go online and find answers for your date about what really went down in Jamestown.
Score: 6 out of 10
The Video
The New World is presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen. The transfer looks great. Part of the film was shot on 65mm so there’s a richness to the image.
The Audio
The film is mixed in 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround Sound English and Stereo Surround.
The Cut
When The New World opened on Christmas in New York and Los Angeles, Malick provided a film that was 2 hour and thirty minutes long. When it came time to go nationwide, he cut fifteen minutes of the film. And then a rumor floated that a three hour version would be on the DVD. The bad news for Malick fanatics is that this DVD is the 2:15 cut. I’m not sure what got sheared from the print, but I’m going to guess it involved actors standing in fields and staring while a voiceover repeats high school poetry about harvesting corn.
The Extras
While you’d imagine there’d be a historical documentary giving background on Jamestown, there’s none. Also to no great surprise there isn’t a director’s commentary.
Making the New World- Director/Editor Austin Lynch deserves a medal for being able to make an engaging 60 minute behind the scenes documentary on a film where the director refused to be interviewed and shown working on the set. Instead he focuses on production designer Jack Fisk. We learn that the location was only a few miles away from Jamestown and they used native trees and techniques to make it proper copy of the settlement and the tribal village. Lynch interviews the Native Americans involved in the production and allows them to discuss how Malick allayed their fears of how they’d be depicted in the film. It is annoying to constantly hear about Terry and how he works with people yet we’re forbidden to witness these interactions. Stanley Kubrick allowed a few production shots to be taken with him near actors and the camera. Even with an absent creative genius, Lynch gives a great view of what it’s like to work on a Malick film. I found it more entertaining than the feature.
Score: 10 out of 10
