also saw this again on HBO today, just as good

Couldn't really get into it. Plodding pace, too many voice-overs and monologues, too much attention paid to the love story. Nice visuals and score though. C+.

Oh, and I don't think those kids were supposed to be there.

I guess I still need to see this.

oh, you're a cheeky little devil, aren't you?

It will be interesting to see if Kilcher sticks with acting. She only has one upcoming movie on her imdb list and it doesn't look like a major one.

I didn't see it, and don't plan on seeing it... but I will start a false lengthy conversation...

How about Loyal's ass?

The thread that never dies...

...it is the undead-thread...

...zombie thread from the year 2005!!!

A few things here Bradley. The thread did die, so, it is infact, yes, a zombie thread. So your first sentence is incorrect as the thread HAD to have died for it to become a zombie

Yes, technically you are correct, though my intention was to describe the undying characteristic of the undead...

Ahh, I see. Well in that aspect, you are correct my good friend, you are correct.

This post probably won't stick, but...I loved it. A part of me was fully expected to have a Zingaling response to it, maybe even sorta hoping because it would be unexpected of me, but...I loved it. A lot. The cinematography, the score, Kilcher, freaking Kilcher...loved it.

****

I may give the film another try.

Oh, Christ. This thread is back.

How did this thread get so big? I'm too lazy to read it all. Someone give me the cliffnotes.

Some people loved it. Some liked it. Some disliked it. Some hated it.

The end.

For the first hour and a half or so, it was well on my way to being one of my favorite films of this decade, or maybe even ever. Amazingly shot, beautiful romantic fairy-tale, fantastically acted(as great as Kilcher was... I actually think I preferred Colin), one of the best scores I've heard, just brilliance. I was feeling the film and then some.

But then they introduce Bale's story and the movie just shifts, and not in a good way. The marriage, birth, seeing london for the first time, a fuckin love triangle, the death... All of it felt ordinary and extremely extremely rushed. The movie loses all the rhythm it had before, Kilcher and Bale just don't work as lovers and Malick all of a suddens decides we need an overload of exposition dialogue between Bale-Kilcher and Kilcher-Farrell, whereas in the early stages of the film no dialogue was needed at all.

The Bale thing also took away some power of the rest of the film, as it makes Pocahontas loving John Smith come off as more of a flamed up teenager fling than anything else.

I don't know. I still think I generally loved the movie, the first 3/4s anyways. But god, it was so close to being perfect. It hurts me that it wasn't.

4/5

I still have to think about this. I don't know how much I can criticize the rest of the movie for everything post-Bale, because it WAS perfect. Maybe I'll warm up to that section on another viewing.

This is 58% on RT...

whaaaaaaat

Good review, a lot of good points.

While I liked it a little less than you did, I generally agree with all of your review. The first half is great, once Farrell departs, it starts getting worse. I never could have imagined saying this, but Bale doesn't do this film much good.

Mommy - - make the bad thread go away!

I loved everything about it and Kilcher was robbed of an Oscar nomination. Reese Witherspoon my ass.

8/10 (A-)

Hi sad-man. You have great taste, and welcome to the boards. Its wonderful how in ten posts you've already managed to join into all the things in this forum that I hold dear: The Foreign/Indie section, the F.Festival, and the New World thread.

Ah, this thread just brings fond tears of joy to my eyes....

That's insane. Someone with HD needs to get this and find out if the cut stuff is as lovely (visually - it's an aesthetic orgasm) as the theatrical cut - or the wide theatrical cut, anyway.

I like my DVD - I've converted lots of people to the New World cult, but probably driven as many away.

I just realized I haven't posted my ancient review in this thread



The New World



What an absolutely riveting and fascinating film! Perpetually interesting, and constantly provocative. Stimulating to the utmost, and never less than mesmerizing.


The film begins with the sounds of nature, and ends with nature's sounds taking over from the orchestral piece that had just been playing before. In between, we witness the contact and conflict between the people to whom nature's sounds are the music, and to those to whom the classical pieces fit that description. We are immediately, at the beginning, made aware of the impending contact. The girl that is to be the central character in the film speaks, addressing Mother, and asking her for strength in telling the story of a man. To those who have read the great Western epics, this is an immediate signal: these invocations were an epic convention beginning with Homer, extending to Virgil, right down to Dante, Spenser, and Milton. The poet's voice calls on the spirit of poetry for inspiration and guidance.

Is this a poem? It's not a film in a conventional sense. The association between the epic genre and this film goes beyond just the invocation. The film doesn't follow a strictly chronological timeline. We constantly get flashbacks to previous episodes, often rendered necessary as means of escape from the current, unbearable situation. Moreover, I would argue that we enter the story midway through. It will lead this young girl to England, but before the film's beginning, there was an entire life that she spent at home.

I think the decision to start when the explorers arrive is not only because of time or story constraints (Kubrick, I think, is the only director that I've come across who is as patient as Malick). The director's view is, largely, that of the explorers. The film offers us thus their point of view, something which is most evident in the speakovers, wherein the various characters express their thoughts, which they otherwise could never utter (or articulate). In addition, however, we also get the young girl's voice too, and through her, that of the Mother. Perhaps we also get that of her people.


Before I get to the specific reasons as to why there is no account of the pre-contact life, I think it's important to talk about the central relationship in the film. Smith is an outcast in an from his society. That much is clear. He does not fit into the confines of his culture, and for his mutinous behaviour, is physically confined. It is hardly surprising that he should be the one extending himself over to the natives. The young girl, on the other hand, seems in tune with her own culture and people. So why is she the one who replies? I think it's because of her connection with Mother. Mother, of course, is Nature, both in the physical and spiritual sense, and including both the general and the human sense. It is that universal quality which connects us to the outside world, to our inner self, and to our fellow human beings. In other words, it's God. The young girl, being connected to that source, thus becomes a being fit to connect with the foreign party. She understands this, and so does Smith. She is faithful to it, Smith betrays this belief, and her with it. This relationship between them, by the way, is called "love" (in the Romantic, conventional sense) in the film. It is very unfortunate that Malick (who, at any rate, is at least as much of a poet as he is a filmmaker) chose to use that term, and to interpret the relationship between them thus, because at the same time, he gives us access to something far more profound and universal, and thus, far more powerful and touching. Malick's unwillingness to abandon the conventional ideas of love for the sake of concentrating on the more universal "love" (love in the sense that Dante uses it, that is, Love as God) is the major reason why this film, as good as it is, is not a masterpiece.

Having said that, let me for a moment defend Malick. I think what he is trying to do is to show, in Smith, the acknowledged allure of the 'New World', and the fact that this 'New World' was destroyed by the explorers and colonizers. It's consistently emphasized throughout the film, and forms one of the central arguments therein (the contrast between the natives and the starving Englishmen and boys is stark, disturbing, and obvious).

Much more pronounced is the young girl's transformation. It must be emphasized that she does not have a name until she is baptized. We have come to call her Pocahontas, but that is our designation, our label, not hers, and not her peoples'. When she is named Rebecca, it forms, I would argue, the culminating act in the murder of the young girl that effectively began the moment that contact was established. In a way, it is almost inevitable; the moment that you come into contact with the other party, life will never be the same. What is so extraordinary is what an extreme form the young girl's transformation takes. I don't mean just in terms of clothing, language, and other external features. More important is the (apparent) death of her spirit. Did you notice how little she smiles? The most fascinating moment at the beginning of the film was was when the colonizers met with the natives in the field, both eyeing each other curiously and threateningly, until the camera fixed on this wonderful girl who was playing with her friend, and who gave us this wonderful smile! Psychologists have in recent decades found smiles to be one of the features of all cultures of the world that are universally understood by all human beings. When you smile, wherever it is you are, or whenever, it tells other human beings that you mean well, that you are happy. When mothers smile, babies are known to detect that soothing gesture. And what if this feature disappears? To me, what it signalled was that the young girl, now young woman, had lost her connection with Mother.


She finds it in the end, in a scene that is rather abrupt for a film that knows how to take its time. I think that her meaning is clear enough: her son is the manifestation of the universal link between all human beings. This is not only true on a spiritual or idealistic level, but is rooted in biological fact: what connects all human beings is that they are one species, and that is only true so long as they can copulate and produce offspring. Once that connection is confirmed, the young woman (whose 'real' self remains unnamed in the film) can return to her home. But that, alas, is not possible. The moment that contact was established, her 'home' was destroyed. So, what other solution is there? Death, of course. And that's precisely what happens.


The ending, from this perspective, seems quite conclusive. But I find there to be an undercurrent which is quite disturbing. To get back to the whole issue of the pre-contact period, so why is it that it is not portrayed? The reason, I think, is simple and has been hinted at above: this film, like the actors in it, and like the audience watching it, are the product of the post-contact period. We are all part of that age which is founded in large part on the colonization of the Americas. And that being so, we are all denied access to what had existed before then. Why so? Because once the different civilizations met each other, inevitably, they collapsed into a new, and comprehensive entity, which had Europe, certainly, as the standard, but which nonetheless liberally took whatever it needed from the native cultures. Maize and tobacco are just two of the more famous examples. The entire American double-continent is an even better one.

Knowing this, I found myself profoundly saddened by the film. What it gives us, or tries to give us, is a glimpse into a world that does not exist anymore. Perhaps it never existed at all. But the idea of it does. And to think of that idea as something that is not realized, and perhaps never was realized, is profoundly saddening. Let me put it this way: none of us will ever know what it felt like to be like that young girl and to correspond directly with Mother. None of us will be able to go back to that world the way that she does at the end when the dances in the garden in England (even if that return is momentary).

If we can never access this world, how is it that the film was made at all? I think the answer is stated in the film, but in a contradictory fashion. John Smith states, twice, that what he felt when he was with the young girl was reality, and everything else a dream, an illusion. The opposite is true: what he felt was a dream. The rest, and that is everything, is reality. This is not meant to be a criticism. On the contrary, the existence of this dream is very consoling. That is because the idea of the New World was and is a wonderful dream. The reality was and is a nightmare. This is the story of one woman who is treated rather well by the Europeans. There are 22 million dead people whose stories did not turn out so well. They tell the real story. Malick gives us the dream.


A-



Just 2 notes:

-An A- instead of an A because, although I appreciate everything that Malick does, and was spellbound by the film, in addition to the above-stated point about the love relationship, there are some technical issues as well as specifics in the story which I found to be below the usual standard of the film. Some of the dialogue, to give an example, is not as good as the film demands it to be.

-On Kilcher's performance, I feel the need to state that, to my mind, it is equaled only by Whoopi Goldberg's in The Color Purple as the finest debut in cinema. I felt tremendous sympathy and admiration for this wonderful and wonder-filled character, and I know that her dignity and strength had to have come from this young actress who meets the challenge with fierce and awe-inspiring determination.



~~~~~~~~~~


Em, I must've been high on hyperboles when writing it, but it's still a nice film

Thanks.