The New World

Dir: Terrence Malick

2005

**

I have a huge problem with Disney’s Pocahontas. Pocahontas, real name Matoaka – later Rebecca Rolfe – was an exploited child. She was said to be have been between 10-12 years old when John Smith claimed her, so every time I see one of my young nieces – or any young girl – wearing a Disney Pocahontas dress or playing with a Pocahontas doll, I shudder with disgust, knowing that a big company is rewriting a nasty piece of history to sell stuff to innocent youth. Pocahontas was snatched as a child to be the sex-slave of an older man who had been at sea for many months. John Rolfe may well have loved her, but she was ripped from her home, exploited and died at a young age. She grew up in paradise and died in Gravesend of all places. She is not a ‘Disney Princess’. So when in 2005, the great but elusive Terrence Malick, who had made four fine films at that point – decades apart, announced that he was going to make a film about the founding of the Jamestown Settlement, it was met with excitement and jubilation. His 1998 epic The Thin Red Line was brilliant, a film well worth waiting twenty years for, and the fact that we only had to wait seven years for his next felt like a dream come true. However, as wonderfully dreamlike it was and how beautiful it looked, The New World represented the film whereby Malick’s legendary status was shattered. It looked like a perfume advert but wasn’t anywhere near as entertaining. One man’s ‘dreamlike’ is another mans ‘whishy-washy’, sure the colours popped right out of the screen but there was no depth to it. It felt like being given some fruit juice that says it is free from colour and additives, only to discover it glows in the dark. And your lips fall off. It’s not very often something can be so beautiful-looking and also so nauseating (although an ex-girlfriend springs to mind – meow). It’s a million times more watchable than Malick’s later films; To The Wonder and Knight of Cups, but I found it hard work all the same. I’m not sure Colin Farrell was best cast as John Smith, although I’m not sure anyone could be accused of really acting in the film. Q’orianka Kilcher is the best thing about the film, her performance of Matoaka is an impressive debut and I respected the fact that she was only 12 when she played the part as she was in real life. I think the only other actors you could accuse of good performances are Christopher Plummer, David Thewlis and Eddie Marsan. Christopher Plummer’s part was cut to ribbons and when he discovered that one of his characters most important speeches had been reduced to background noise he vowed never to work with Malick again. Thewlis’ talents were wasted yet again and Marsan’s brilliant scene was only seconds long. I will say that I respect the rules that Malick imposed on himself and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki; No artificial lights, no crane or dolly shots - just handheld Steadicams, everything to be shot in the subjective view, all shots in deep-focus (foreground and background visible and focused), camera crew encouraged to shoot unexpected things that might happen/catch their eye that instinct tells them they should film and no shot deemed to have visual strength shall not be used. The problem is however, that as Emmanuel Lubezki later admitted. Most of these rules were broken, artificial light was used often and there are plenty of shallow-focus shots. Malick was sent a bottle of champagne from Kodak, after they learned that he was the first director to use over one million feet of their film stock. Great for Kodak, but for me this is a sign of terrible direction. Christian Bale later spoke of Malick’s directing style and said he wanted to test the director and see what he’d do if he just walked out of a shot. Apparently Malik just followed him and there were crew members everywhere running away and jumping into bushes. Malick filmed the movie around an already completed score (rather than the other way round) and almost all of the dialog had to dubbed in post-production because Malick – the director! – could be heard talking in the background. This greatly respected and mysteriously elusive director seemed to be something of a charlatan. I’ve got a lot of time for the experimenters and the eccentrics but The New World is the work of an amateur director and a brilliant cinematographer. Could Badlands, Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line have been luck? He got in trouble for his timekeeping during Days of Heaven and didn’t work again for twenty years, but everything he’s made since The New World has been samey, ‘dreamlike’ and about as nauseating as it gets. Calvin Kline should sue.