The love story of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith plays second fiddle to the beautiful visuals in Terrence Malick’s The New World.
You won’t see a more beautifully shot film this year. Terrence Malick’s The New World was nominated only for one Oscar at this year’s ceremony—for best achievement in cinematography, which it should have won for director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki (Y Tu Mama Tambien, Sleepy Hollow). Unlike Dion Beebe’s Oscar-winning, bombastic visuals for Memoirs of a Geisha, Lubezki’s transcendental use of light and shadow, especially in the opening shot, is awe inspiring, and his fluid camerawork of natural surroundings and idyllic island life is one of the best we’ve ever seen.
But the film’s power does not lie solely on its visuals. The New World is probably Malick’s most sustained and realized film after 1978’s Days of Heaven. While critics have whined about World’s initial running time of over 150 minutes, director Malick has since re-edited the film to just over two hours, making it more cohesive and less indulgent. But hardcore Malick fans wouldn’t mind seeing the full first cut, as World is an absorbing, gorgeous, lyrical, elegiac and ultimately visionary film.
At its heart, this is really the love story of Pocahontas (outstanding 15-year-old newcomer Q’Orianka Kilcher), the Native American princess who provided aid to the settlers of Virginia, who fell in love with Captain John Smith (Colin Farrell, Phone Booth), was exiled by her father and tribe, and became the dutiful wife of kind tobacconist John Rolfe (a strappy and scenestealing Christian Bale (Batman Begins), who appears only during the film’s last quarter.)
The New World tells two different kinds of love stories: The youthful passion of Pocahontas’ courtship with Smith, who later left her to discover the world, and her earthier relationship with the stable Rolfe. All of this occurs against the backdrop of the uneasy relationship that exists between the tribes of naturals and the English interlopers, set in 1607.
There is little dialogue in the film, and its narrative is driven by the inner poetic thoughts of its three main protagonists to provide insight into their emotions, buoyed by the wonderfully textured musical score by James Horner (Titanic), along with classical works by Mozart and Wagner, and of course, the visuals. The film’s final scenes are especially moving, both as a metaphor, and because Malick has created a new world for Pocahontas, when she travels to England, closes her chapter on John Smith, and realizes her eternal love for John Rolfe.
Malick has always been known as a painter who uses celluloid as his canvas, and The New World is no exception. It breathes and moves in a lingering pace, and without compromising his style, Malick manages to wholly develop the emotions and characters of his leads with very few words, but with pure visuals. Willfully unrelenting and uncommercial, The New World is every real movie lover’s dream come true.