If PBS Made Music Videos
New World is Sedate and Stupefying

This much can be said for Terrence Malick's epic portrayal of Pocahontas, it's a beautiful film. The costumes, art direction, and cinematography are breathtaking. The problem is that it suffers from too much classical music and too little dialogue. The pretty series of pictures set to soothing music results in a battle for audiences to stay awake during a very obtuse history lesson.

The New World
Colin Farrell portrays Capt. John Smith exploring the coast of Virginia for a new colony settlement in The New World. (New Line Cinema, 2005)
Directed by: Terrence Malick
Written by: Terrence Malick
Starring: Colin Farrell, Q'Orianka Kilcher, and Christian Bale

Rated PG-13 (for some intense battle sequences)
Running time: 135 min.

FilmGuru's Rating : 3 out of 10.

The New World is Malick's vision of telling the Pocahontas story without the trappings of myth and legend. Colin Farrell portrays Capt. John Smith, a man whose arrival in the new world begins with a death sentence for mutiny and progresses to a chance at redemption.

As most people know, the first contact does not go well between the English and the "naturals" or "savages" (depending on the point of view). A clash of cultures causes fear and mistrust between the two camps and Smith is sent up river with a small group of men to visit a "king" who might be able to broker a peace.

The lack of a common language is an obvious problem. Their forced "guide" escapes and Smith and his men are set on by the natives. Smith fights but is overcome and dragged before the chief. Powhatan (August Schellenberg) prepares to have Smith killed, but his favored daughter, Pocahontas (Q'Orianka Kilcher), throws herself on Smith and asks the chief to spare his life. The result is an uneasy truce to have her learn as much as she can from Smith. He teaches her bits of his language and lives among the natives. When he returns to his colony, however, he is not prepared for the hardships that await him there.

For all my problems with the film, I was delighted by Kilcher's portrayal of Pocahontas. For the first time, Hollywood has cast a girl of appropriate age to play the native girl who was about 14 at the time of the story. Kilcher is a beautiful and talented actress who does a great job with this role. I have heard some complain that a North American Native American should have been cast instead of someone of South American heritage. I find this to be small-minded and insulting. It's the same kind of bigotry that suggested that Chinese women should not have starred in the Japanese story Memoirs of a Geisha.

Unfortunately, the film lacks life. It is a history teacher's nightmare. This is the kind of film that, despite its attention to historical detail, does nothing to bring the history alive. Despite its large cast of characters, it does everything it can to avoid introducing them. I suppose Malick assumes that we all know the story, but it seems silly not to have characters introduce themselves upon meeting one another.

The lack of dialogue only compounds the problem. There is very little verbal communication between the characters, which makes sense in the scenes between Pocahontas and Smith but nowhere else. Long, silent scenes stretch throughout the film with only music to accompany the scenery. The film relies heavily on dull narration that reads like bad poetry. Worse yet, the music soundtrack overwhelms everything, with the music often impeding what little dialogue and narration that exists.

The editing of the film is unique in that it avoids any attempts to tell the story in a conventional, linear fashion. Several scenes seem hacked together or incomplete. Pocahontas may be talking to Smith one minute, then walking away toward Rolfe the next (making audiences assume the conversation ended) only to have her return beside Smith a moment later to continue talking. The sound editing, likewise, fails to pick up both sides of any given conversation. As a result, the dialogue seems incomplete.

The latter part of the film, in which Pocahontas goes to England, offers some interesting counterpoint to the English people's arrival in the New World. Maybe Malick should have spent more time emphasizing this to make the film resonate more with audiences already familiar with the legendary story.