Here is a review I read, oo er, this site is one I usually agree with:
The New World consists mostly of heroic vistas of the Virginia woods and coastal swamplands, of English sailing ships of circa 1600 construction, dropping and raising anchor frequently, of rain, sun, clouds, wind, a bit of blustery snowfall. Bands of native Americans, with very edgy tattoos, piercings, body paint and hairdos frequently mill about aimlessly. Bearded, hairy-chested, filthy, and probably foul-smelling English sailors and adventurers frequently mill about muddy, wooden forts. Even in London, the citizens frequently mill about in stone squares. Characters in The New World speak private thoughts through voice-overs or talk directly to the camera, instead of carrying on actual conversations.
Colin Farrell (who plays Captain John Smith) is beautiful for the camera. Q’Orianka Kilcher (who plays Pocahontas) is even more beautiful than Colin Farrell. In scene after scene, Farrell and Kilcher, or Farrell, or Kilcher, run through the woods, roll in the grass, stroke each other’s cheek or bosom or eyebrow, or make limpid eyes at the camera, always, always, always looking stunningly beautiful. Seasons come and seasons go, a smothering Wagnerian soundtrack washes over everything beautiful, making everything even more cruelly beautiful.
All is beautiful to look at, even if love and fate and life in the seventeenth century, New World or Old, is cruel, unkind, unfair—life may be a *****, but she is a beautiful *****, the most beautiful ***** imaginable. The only question Malick seems to offer here is how many people will actually sit through this two-and-a-half hour Calvin Klein ad.
I liked it, my date liked it, she wants to see it again but I don't think I could. Not sayin' the movie sucked, it had quality and was very therapeutic, very visual, more visual than anything I've seen recently.
In other words, seeing it once was enough for me. But I wasn't disappointed after watching it.
A good review from a great movie mag (Empire Magazine):
Terrence Malick’s second (Days Of Heaven) and third (The Thin Red Line) films, there has been only a breezy seven years between the third and this one. But Malickites who may have feared that he rushed off any old tripe in such a short space of time can rest assured — his reinvigoration of the Pocahontas myth is the director working near the peak of his powers. Far too daring to trouble the Academy, far too niche to worry about opening weekends, The New World finds poetry in emotion (and vice versa) and once again reminds us that movies are far too rich to be the domain of the storytellers only.
From frame one, you know you’re deep in Malick country. The film begins with a virtually dialogue-free, ten-minute sequence. To the strains of James Horner in minimalist, near-Philip Glass mode, the arrival of three English ships docking on the James River becomes a joyous set-piece of discovery and wonder. As the Europeans subsequently battle the Native Americans during the creation of the Jamestown settlement, Malick tempers the love story, action sequences and cuts of tribal life with his favourite concerns — a couple at odds with societal constraints, the primitive versus the modern, the purity of nature versus human hubris.
What could be a dry history lesson is turned into something unique and quietly heartfelt. Yet what really dazzles about The New World is that it is like looking at life through different eyes. In other hands, Smith (Colin Farrell) and Pocahontas’ (Q’Orianka Kilcher) initial courtship as they prance through fields could have been Pastoral Romance 101 (remember Attack Of The Clones?), but Malick makes it both sweet and affecting, conveying how the couple come alive to each other and their surroundings through images alone. Despite being Malick’s most straightforward narrative since Badlands — the joyous courtship gives way to a downbeat study of loss, as Pocahontas believes Smith to be dead and is integrated into life with the white settlers who incongruously name her Rebecca — he still imbues the rituals and rhythms of 17th century life with a visual/aural lyricism that reaches places CGI can’t touch. As perhaps befits a stranger in a strange land, Farrell spends much of the movie looking befuddled and bewildered. Christian Bale, who turns up in a touching, tender final third as an aristocrat who takes Pocahontas back to England, underplays to a tee, letting his innate decency eke out under a lifetime of restraint. But, performance-wise, the movie belongs to 15 year-old newcomer Kilcher, who bursts with energy and curiousity early on, her innocence giving way to a touching study of grief as her world crumbles around her. It’s fresh, instinctive and — in a just world — an award-winning performance.
Yet take note: The New World will most certainly not appeal to everyone. The pace is so slow, it would have to pull over to let a funeral go by. There are competing voiceover narrations, unclear character motivations and untold pauses for breath; Malick revels in repetitions of images of burbling water, birds taking off, burbling water, swaying grass, burbling water... But if you give yourself over to Malick’s sensibility and his feel for cultures colliding, this feels less like indulgence and more like an absorbing, sumptuous and ultimately moving luxury.
Verdict ****
Definitely an acquired taste — the pace is ponderous, the storytelling approach oblique and the studied quality of the imagery potentially distancing — but The New World is a handcrafted original in a morass of Cheaper By The Dozen 2s. Malick’s magic remains undiminished.
I'm still waiting for it to arrive over here...
I saw it when it first came out on at the theater and me and my date truly enjoyed it. It doesn't play like your normal movie, more like a montage of scenes, but what clearly stands out about it is the acting and the scenery. I noticed that the approach with the movie is "less is more". Farrell probably didn't utter a word until the 20th minute or so, but his is a powerful performance nonetheless. I truly felt his loss when he knew he had to give up Pocahontas, and later tries to reconcile with her in Europe.
There was also just this epic feel to the movie. Seeing how the two different worlds interacted with one another was amazing, for example the indians inspecting the forts the colonists made, and conversely Wes Studi's character analyzing the glass window full of Christian images inside a European church.
And anytime Wagner's music comes on only adds to that epic feel, especially when montages of Pocahontas is shown towards the end after she's deceased. That was a very sad moment and my date was actually tearing up. But what a great movie nonetheless.
I wanted to see this film when it was released but it didn't get released in my local cinema 🙁 My cinema isn't very good..
So yeah.. I don't know whether it's worth watching it or not by the mixed opinions. But I wanted to see it, so I probably will at some point. It's just I never rent films because then I think I might aswell had just bought it, but I don't have much money and there are many other films I want. Hmm.. I'll have to wait until I get a job.
Originally posted by SnakeEyes
Please tell me, then, what made this film so "amazing."Other than some decent cinematography, I saw nothing in the 2 hour+ film that was very good at all.
I guess I can see why you didn't enjoy it, it's not for your average audience. But I thought it was one of the best of 2005 (if not the best).
Originally posted by Solo
Malick is an amazing director. The fact that he refused to use any artificial lighting in any scene of "The New World" is just astonishing. Considering how bright a lot of the scenes are. The acting is better than solid. The cinematography is the best I've ever seen.I guess I can see why you didn't enjoy it, it's not for your average audience. But I thought it was one of the best of 2005 (if not the best).
Fair enough, I suppose.
I still think the movie is one of the worst films of the past year and possibly worse than that. Now don't get me wrong, I didn't expect an action movie or anything of that sort, I just expected a strong story and interesting characters and so on. What I got was a 2 hour and 15 minute scenery flick. Seriously, the acting was mediocre, there was hardly any dialogue/character development (not to mention I didn't care for any of the characters, which shows that the movie didn't do a good job with the characters in the first place), there was virtually no plot (at least the plot that was there was so uninteresting that it might as well have not been there at all), and overall it was a boring film in ALL aspects. Good cinematography; so what? If the film is really terrible (which in my opinion, it was), then some good scenery won't make up for that.
😉