We need another New World...

Terrence Malick, in his moving film The New World, spares us many things. But he spares us only so the full impacts can strike home more powerfully. This is a film graced with moments of overwhelming beauty, yet it leaves us with a profound and desperate sense of loss. Malick argues that these beautiful moments, these shards of perfection, these emanations from a time before our innocence was lost, can somehow dampen the defeats that overwhelm us as life proceeds.

Does this film speak of romantic love in the face of responsibility and obstacles? Or is it rather the Edenic harmony with nature that we have shattered with modern life? What is it exactly that we have lost? Everything?

Like any great artist, Malick resists easy conclusions, and refuses to dictate to the audience. Some particularly beautiful moments occur as the three European ships arrive in the waters off Virginia. We see them first on the water, resplendent, beautiful, then we see them from the shore, over the shoulders of the Naturals (as the Native Americans are called in this film), through the trees. We watch them watch the ships in wonder, these huge masted canoes beyond their ken, we share their mix of wonder and fear, we notice how they must, must look at the ships, but also how they linger still behind the leaves of the trees. We feel their childlike innocence and note the clean lines of their lean bodies. When we cut to the ship we (if we are of European descent) recognize ourselves in these hairier, smellier and more stern fellows. (Much time could be spent on Malick's idealization of the Naturals' life, and to be sure at first it smacks of the facile "Native Americans good, Europeans bad" over-correction of modern multicultural education, but Malick's hunting bigger game here. This isn't about such small things, it's about the promise of humanity and the ways it always, always falls short. So be offended if you must, but be offended at turning everyone into metaphors (or metonyms) not at some hippie/boomer-type 6th grade history teacher revisionism.) Indeed, the Naturals sniff at the Europeans once they're ashore and the two groups mingle to inspect one another. Again, Malick captures a fresh view of this moment, portraying neither hostility nor open-armed welcome on either side, instead letting us balance at the knife-edge of exhilaration and caution on each side. (Note he takes care to move the camera as well, now over a European shoulder, now over a Natural's shoulder, again emphasizing that this time the camera (and by extension the film) will take no sides. Or, perhaps better, will take all sides.)

This works brilliantly for the narrative as well, for when violence erupts (as we know and dread it must) we feel the horror of it twice, once for the frightened dislocated Europeans, and once more for the once-friendly, now-threatened Naturals. We feel visceral disgust at the waste of violence and war. Someone once said it's impossible to make an anti-war film because the inherent drama and kinetic nature of filmed violence sweeps the viewer into it in a gripping way. I've never quite agreed with the statement, but understand the sentiment. Here Malick films and edits his action skillfully, yet it remains horrifying rather than exhilarating.

So, yes, the Naturals are idealized. Yes, the grimy smelly Europeans stand in for corruption and rot entering into the New World. But they are not demonized. It is more nuanced. The Europeans seek nonviolent interaction (though primarily so they’ll have someone to trade with if their crops don’t succeed). Of course, Malick is also setting up the natives as more in touch with nature.

Early on, John Smith’s voice-over speaks of this new land being a place where no one need suffer want, where no man need fall under the control of another. Pynchon worked some of this same ground in Mason & Dixon, though in far jokier ways. But it doesn’t matter. It strikes home. It hits you in the gut.

This film is littered with beautiful images and striking juxtapositions, but it would be wrong to finish this meditation upon it without mentioning the fine performances found within. No review went without lauding Q'orianka Kilcher, and rightfully so. She captures the innocence and slow maturation of Pocahontas with grace and subtlety. The wonder of young love as she falls for John Smith is convincing and heartbreaking. Colin Farrell is well-cast as John Smith. He's not an actor that I find generally impressive, but he's excellent here. Similarly solid are Christian Bale and Christopher Plummer. Sometimes in meditative, shot-to-the-hilt films like this the performances are overwhelmed or forgotten, but this time they keep it anchored. Malick understands his ideas will strike home more forcefully if we're given humanity to which they can be attached.