A 17th-Century Native American Woman's Journey
The New World (2005) gets underway in 1607 in what later became known as Virginia, and the first character we see is Pocahontas (teenage newcomer Q'orianka Kilcher), a member of an Algonquian-speaking tribe. She appears to be a playful adolescent, but her life changes drastically after the arrival of British men who set about building Jamestown, which will become the first permanent English settlement in America.
Pocahontas is smitten with one of the Englishmen, Captain John Smith (Colin Farrell), but after she gives her heart to him, he abandons her. She is exiled from her tribe and ends up being held by the British as a hostage. Faced with few options, she adopts the ways of the Jamestown settlers and marries the farmer John Rolfe (Christian Bale). They have a son together, but when Pocahontas visits England, she falls ill. She is buried there in 1616, and the film contains no shots of people after it shows her gravesite.
Beautiful and Poetic, but Slow-Paced
Terrence Malick (Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line) wrote and directed The New World. He is a visual poet, and I loved his cinematic rendering of the tale of Pocahontas. The movie has many lyrical shots of things like trees, birds, grass and water. But all this beauty takes time, and while I was enthralled by the visual nature of the film, I realize its pacing will try the patience of some viewers. Although the movie doesn't have a lot of narrative drive or dramatic intensity, Malick's dreamlike filmic style mesmerized me, and I was never bored.
Q'orianka Kilcher and Colin Farrell
The two lead actors give fine performances. Q'orianka Kilcher was only 14 years old when The New World was shot, but her youthfulness, general appearance and graceful movements help make the film's Pocahontas credible. Colin Farrell as Captain John Smith comes across as an adventurer who will somehow always cause trouble. Farrell was twice Kilcher's age when the scenes showing their characters getting romantically involved were shot, but I think Malick handled this tastefully.
A Legend With Interpretation Left to Viewers
In The New World, Malick gives his version of the legend of Pocahontas in a way that illuminates history, although he does not confine his story to known facts. But more than any film I know, this movie allows us to experience with the characters the wonder and dread of something radically new and different coming along in life. Unable to foresee the future, the characters deal as best they can on a day-to-day basis with the strangeness of what is happening to them. However, the film's resonance for us viewers derives largely from our general knowledge of the long-term historical outcome: European settlers will eventually increase manyfold, and the Indians will be exterminated, assimilated or pushed to the margins of society.
There is considerable ambiguity in The New World, so the movie is open to different interpretations. Malick has Pocahontas' people casting her out for warning the British of an impending attack on the fort, and it's only when there is no place for her in the Indian world that she begins her Anglicization. But she has a mind of her own, and my reading of the film is that she becomes English only insofar as externals are concerned: in her interior life, she remains Native American. Also, in addition to being an individual caught up in far-reaching events, the movie's Pocahontas exemplifies an entire race. To my way of thinking, The New World captures the essence of the conflict between the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere and those who relocated there from Europe by focusing on a nine-year period in the life of one American Indian woman.
Only DVD Extra: A Dry Making-Of Documentary
On DVD, The New World has only one bonus material of any consequence, a making-of in which Malick seemingly did not participate. This documentary runs just under an hour, and I found it dry.
About all I learned from this documentary that I really wanted to know was that the Virginia part of the film was shot within a few miles of where the historical events took place. Much of the rest had to do with things like building the fort out of local materials, growing corn and tobacco of the type cultivated in 1607, teaching modern-day American Indians to move in certain ways, borrowing old ships from a museum, and doing makeup, hair, costumes and armor. In short, a collection of technical details about making the movie presented in a way that did not compel my attention.
On the next page, I've listed the details for the The New World DVD.
