The New World

After viewing enough Terrence Malick movies, you learn to expect certain things. Although when I think about it, the man has only directed four feature length movies, so maybe you can't view enough of his movies to discern that. Still there does seem to be a surprising amount of attention drawn to nature and man's struggle with it. But what was subtle in Badlands (1973) and Days of Heaven (1978) became blatant in Thin Red Line (1998) and now The New World.

The New World definitely is styled in the vain of The Thin Red Line. Whereas, however, I enjoyed Thin Red Line, I found The New World at times to be a bit much. The most notable difference being that one feels every minute of the new movie and the long, long narrative is broken up by only a few action sequences.

I find the message a bit tired as well. Malick's contrast of the natural world (peaceful, utopian) of the Indonesians with war was interesting in The Thin Red Line. His contrast of the Naturals living in harmony with nature and the English forcing nature to their whim is decidedly not interesting. Plus The New World wants to be three movies at once: a love story between Pocahontas and John Smith, a love story between Pocahontas and John Rolfe, and the story of the struggles of the first years of the Jamestown colony.

I could only interest myself in one of these stories and went with the Smith-Pocahontas romance. It worked surprisingly well, the chemistry was electric and convincing. There was a neat sadness in Smith's constant declaration that Pocahontas didn't know who he really was. Colin Farrell as Smith was superb at being both completely vulnerable when he is with Pocahontas and yet also distanced. His inability to abandon his duty and his desire for Pocahontas to be happy was beautifully summed up, when he leaves secretly and arranges for someone to say he died. I wanted more of this story and less of everything else.

The Rolfe-Pocahontas story was much weaker. Either from lack of chemistry or inferiority of the story telling compared to the Smith-Pocahontas romance, it just didn't work. Her choice for security over love, as it seemed to me, was wholly uninspiring for a movie that is trying for the epic. Finally, the film just ends, no telling us what happens to Smith or Rolfe, although the quickly drop in Pocahontas' fate. Obviously Jamestown survived but a movie should provide a satisfactory conclusion for the characters it treats so well, and not require me to resort to a history book just to see what happened.