The New World - Terrence Malick

Terrence Malick’s The New World is, essentially, a story of wonder. The opening moments play almost like a climax as the Native Americans nervously and excitedly watch the English ships pulling into the shore, and the English lay eyes for the first time on what will eventually become the settlement of Jamestown, Virginia. The film divides itself fairly equally between the perspective of the natives and the settlers and its ending mirrors its beginning, with Native Americans going to England – the “old world” officially, but of course it’s the new world to them.

The two groups co-exist at first in harmony but this fragile peace is broken by the curiosity of the Native Americans and the hair-trigger aggression of the English and soon they are at war with each other while also fighting internal battles. The morale of the English is at a low due to their poor living conditions and swiftly depleting rations. John Smith (Colin Farrell), who disembarked his ship in chains, a prisoner set to be hanged for attempting a mutiny, is given a chance to redeem himself by leading a small party into the wilderness to make contact with another tribe for the sake of establishing trade. During the course of the mission Smith is separated from the group, captured, and brought before Chief Powhatan (August Schellenberg), who intends to kill him until one of his daughters throws herself on him, saving his life. This young woman is Pocahontas (Q’Orianka Kilcher), though that name is never spoken during the course of the film. Smith lives for a time with the tribe and falls in love with his saviour and then returns to the settlers, whom he finds in an even worse state than when he left. As winter approaches, it looks as if the colony might die off, but once again Pocahontas saves the day.

Her allegiance to the settlers causes a rift with her father, who quite naturally would prefer that the settlers give up and return to England rather than get comfortable and continue to expand their colony. Eventually he casts her out and she goes to live permanently at Jamestown, but by this time Smith has been sent away on his next mission and leaves instructions for Pocahontas to be told that he is dead. She mourns him, but of course what she is mourning is more than just a man. She is grieving for everything she gave up for him, which includes her family, her traditions, and the only way of life she ever knew.

As the film shifts from Smith’s perspective to that of Pocahontas, John Rolfe (Christian Bale) enters the fray and falls in love with Pocahontas himself. They marry despite certain objections stemming from the fact of an Englishman marrying a “natural” (as the Native Americans are known by the English), but by this point Pocahontas is so assimilated into the English ways of life that the relationship is allowed to proceed. They have a son and later embark on a journey to England, where Pocahontas will enjoy an audience with the royals and come face-to-face with Smith again. Her journey to the new world will end as tragically as that of some of those English men who first made contact with her home shore and like them, she will be buried far from everything and everyone she ever knew.

Malick has always been a director with a keen interest in landscape, particularly big, open spaces. The New World has no shortage of long, thoughtful shots of rivers and fields and the like which act as a kind of guiding rhythm for the film. These shots and the frequent use of voice-overs work together to create a dream-like quality for the story that works marvellously. Malick strives for historical accuracy in all aspects save and except for the romanticized relationship between Smith and Pocahontas, but the film itself isn’t about the facts as much as it is about the dream of discovery and that dream making contact with the harsh reality.

The voice-overs are used to convey a fairly significant amount of the film’s dialogue, which works well for the mood the film ultimately achieves, but does do a bit of a disservice to the actors. The performances end up feeling muted and somewhat vague in their construction, and the actors feel almost like an afterthought, pushed into the background in favour of every other element. There are moments when the actors have an opportunity to demonstrate their abilities, but for the most part the performances aren’t what you remember about this film. What you remember is the loving attention to landscape and the haunting, beautiful images that Malick has crafted, a personification of Fitzgerald’s lines in The Great Gatsby: “for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.”

Watch a trailer for the movie here: