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The New World, director Terrence Malick’s fourth film and fourth breathtaking masterpiece, is many things. It’s a historical exploration of what occurred when the first European explorers clashed with the Native Americans when they began settling in North America. It’s a romance between two strangers whose worlds couldn’t be further apart. It’s a study of human nature and how dominant societies become dominant through refusing to accept the culture of others and instead demanding that other societies bend to their customs or be eradicated. Most of all, though, it’s a unique coming-of-age tale, showing the evolution of a young innocent girl into an anguished, matured woman.

When the European settlers first arrive, Pocahontas (Q’orianka Kilcher) is a beautiful, enchanting young woman. In our first moments with her, we see her frolicking in the grass, using body language to play with her brother and simply enjoy life. She is a fully liberated woman and Kilcher plays her with a wide-eyed curiosity and playfulness that instantly wins you over and has you yearning to learn more about this mysterious, pixie-esque creature. She enchants you with a quality one can only describe as ethereal, the kind of performance that comes along so rarely that it’s a crime to miss when it does. As her character grows and is forced to adapt to the English standards of society, Kilcher’s portrayal becomes incredibly fascinating as she pours a level of emotion into this tortured soul that is absolutely astonishing from someone her age. Her performance effortlessly matures as her character does, with a mysterious grace and complexity that is far beyond her years, in terms of both the actress and the character. In the final moments of the film we see how she has fully matured into a woman who approaches things from a much more mental standpoint, instead of just following her heart wherever it takes her. Throughout the film she was let down and abandoned by her love and he proved to be unreliable, so when she was faced with the decision of choosing between her passionate lover and someone who would always be there for her, she showed an enormous amount of growth by choosing the latter. Malick allows us to watch someone from her birth into English culture all the way through adolescence and into a fully realized woman, without making it obvious that we are watching a woman develop through all of the early stages of womanhood. Kilcher keeps up with every beat of this evolution, flawlessly maturing in a natural way, rather than in huge steps like most films tend to do.

Soon after the Englishmen settle, their colony is met with turmoil, as happens whenever a new society attempts to build from scratch. In this turmoil, they decide to send John Smith (Colin Farrell) a soldier with questionable standing among the settlers, to go and see the Native American’s leader and attempt to begin trading goods. When he arrives he is met with aggression and when his life is about to end, Pocahontas steps in and saves him. This quickly forms a strong bond between the two of them, as two cultures collide and two people instantly realize a connection and use this to explore an entirely new world within each other. This is a romance like very few others before it, as they grow together, John becoming more liberated and in touch with nature through her people and Pocahontas becoming more constricted and immersed in chaos through his. The language barrier between the two of them could have created a problem for most writer/directors, but Malick doesn’t miss a step and, along with his actors, creates a romance that transcends words. It’s one of movements and body language, one of the most beautiful romances ever put on screen. Instead of focusing on words and typical development, this is a romance entirely of the heart and watching it was one of the most heartwarming experiences of my life. The scene where they slowly slide their hands across each other’s bodies is one of the most beautiful and romantic in cinematic history.

In casting the internal, soft romantic lead John Smith, Malick could have gone with at least a dozen easy choices through Hollywood’s leading men or indie darlings with grand reputations. Instead, he went for Colin Farrell, a man fresh off of action thrillers like S.W.A.T. and The Recruit, who had recently become a big name in American audiences thanks to testosterone-driven, masculine performances in a plethora of “guy” films. This was a fascinating choice and, given Farrell’s magnificent talents, a very intelligent one on his part. I have never seen Farrell give a performance anything like this, yet it was no surprise that he nailed every second of it. He portrays Smith with a gentleness and grace that I didn’t know he had in him, but when his romantic scenes with Kilcher began I was amazed that he hadn’t made a career out of roles like this. Another display of the tremendous talent and range that he contains.

Many directors would have gone the typical Hollywood route in depicting Native Americans. They would have shown them as savages and casted Hollywood actors to do their best accents to speak in English but make it believable for the audience that these people were out to get us. Terrence Malick however, in one of his many genius moves, went with an approach I’ve never seen before. He did all of the homework he could and portrayed their story in a shockingly realistic manner, bringing a language back from the dead and casting people of true Native American heritage for the roles. But he went even further than that, singling it down to the exact region of these people and bringing authenticity to an all time high. In fact, he doesn’t miss a beat on making any aspect of this film entirely genuine. Every inch of this film breathes life and complete authenticity to a jaw dropping level. He doesn’t portray the settlers as pure evil and the natives as pure good or vice versa, but instead portrays every person as a human being and each side has their own reasonable motives for everything they do and their own favorable and unfavorable members.

Throughout the picture, there is an underlying theme of society and their need to force others to adapt to their customs, which ties in wonderfully with Pocahontas’ coming-of-age story. When we first meet the natives, they are a spiritual group of people, very in touch with nature and the simple beauty of the earth. Pocahontas in particular embodies this approach to life. But as she begins to live with the English people, they force her to change her ways because they don’t understand them. They destroy where she came from and remove any trace of her beginnings. It’s tragic watching a culture completely change this girl, this being of pure, unimaginable beauty, into what they feel is appropriate. They make her wear restricting clothes and give her a new name, whereas before she received that name no one (not even herself or her own people) labeled her as anything. I was surprised to find myself absolutely devastated by this aspect of the story, even when Pocahontas came to terms with the world and what it takes to be a part of it in the end. Her final conversation with Smith is a very poignant one and embodies most of the themes of the film; how their love was pure and beautiful, but it ran it’s course and now it’s time for them both to move onto something new. This message fits with what was occurring in the Americas, as they were transformed from pure beauty into the standards of European living.

Despite only having four films under his belt over the course of three decades, it is clear that Terrence Malick is one of the most impressive and unique talents in cinematic history. It is also clear that he has a very strong connection with nature and the beauty of it, and this is perhaps the finest display of his relationship with the earth. He creates entrancing visuals without any special effects and immerses the viewer in this gorgeous world and the pure, indescribable beauty of nature is the perfect parallel for the pure, indescribable beauty of the romance in the center of the picture. Of course, along with any Malick film there is also a score to die for and this one hits that same mix of extreme grace and splendor with an almost ominous, haunting undertone, while never overpowering the characters and story of the film. Like Malick’s other three masterpieces, The New World is a film whose brilliance can’t ever fully be described in words. It’s more of an experience than anything and, like any true experience, when it’s over you can’t describe what it was that made it so amazing. You just know that it was perfect.

I have been anticipating seeing this film for months. I admire Terrence Malick’s previous 3 films,“Badlands”,“Days of Heaven” and “Thin Red Line”.“The New World” starts on a promising note with the arrival of the explorers to the new world. The naturals (Indians) encounter these strange invaders with equal awe and fear. The new world is depicted as a virtual paradise and the settlers recreate their ugly version of home. Captain John Smith encounters the Indian princess Pocahontus and is immediately smitten by her charm. John Smith is commissioned to directly encounter these naturals for trade purposes and he is spared from death by Pochahontus. Colin Farrell as John Smith basically emotes and you never understand his motivations or his level of feelings for Pocahontus. Q’Orianke Keliler on the other hand is a real find as Pocahontus and she radiates every frame of film she inhabits.Terrence Malick has taken this story and through voice-overs and endless shots of nature, he has tried to construe another meaning of life poetic montage, like he did for “The Thin Red Line”. This worked brilliantly in a film trying to seek the nature and meaning of war, but in this film this tactic interrupts the narrative and the film becomes a cinematic masterpiece with a hollow core.

Cinema is a visual art, first and foremost. And no other film in this decade, or several others, has been so richly and brilliantly visual. It almost could be a silent film, given Malick’s astonishing ability to create a mise en scene for his actors, to film it in such a way as to express everything that is needed to understand what is going on. Indeed, for a film that involves the meeting of two alien worlds, the only language that can connect them is the visual. And yet, despite the primacy of the image in this film, the act of listening becomes something that is so immersive that you feel you truly are in a new world. Being pounded over the head with dolby sound or 3D cgi in ADD dayglow visuals is the work of an insecure amateur speaking to a moribund audience. Malick here films with such gorgeous restraint, such intimacy, that we are truly there.
Here thanks must go to a man I have already praised so highly in this list – Mexican cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki. Legendary production designer Jack Fisk (longtime collaborator with Malick and, among others, David Lynch) created the sets as real locations, so Lubezki could film as if a documentary crew back in the 17th century. This was done without tripods, without dollies or gantries and, most amazingly, with only natural light. Yes, read that again – only natural light. The achievement alone is simply staggering. That the images produced are of heart-stopping beauty just crowns Lubezki and Malick.
The New World is based on the story of the first English settlement in mainland America, Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. It covers the hardships and near collapse of this town and their encounters with the natives, specifically the now semi-mythical romance between Captain Smith and a Powhatan Princess by the name of Pocahantis. The conflicts between the natives and the colonists catch Smith and Pocahantis up in their wake and, when a force as strong as nature – politics – separates them, she falls into the arms of tobacco empire founder John Rolfe.
The film could have fallen on the central casting choice of the un-named Powhatan princess (Pocahantis). Malick went for an unknown, Q’orianka Kilcher, an astonishing 14 years old when shooting began. She is utterly radiant throughout her time on-screen. There isn’t a scene of such joy than the fresh faced Powhaten Princess, trussed up in her Jacobean dress, performing cartwheels in a stately garden. The contrast of the stuffy order of the old world, to the free wheeling new. She is courted in her forbidden love by a never-better Colin Farrell, fully living up to the role of somewhat rough and hardy soldier and rogue. The scenes between them are tender, never dropping into mawkish sentimentality. Christian Bale is at his best as Rolfe, both fatherly and vulnerable. A scene of his courting of the princess, as they silently walk through a meadow, his eyes never far from hers, is a wonder of unspoken expression. It’s a shame Bale hasn’t chosen the roles to test himself like that since.
On several occasions I have extolled the virtues of the long take, the unbroken shot. Malick makes the exception to this. His roving, hand held camera, notices everything. A finger that starts the touch when two hands hold for the first time, the delve of skin when caressed, the reflection of torches in river water at dusk. What stops this being an Arronofsky-esque MTV fest is the stately, natural, pace that Malick has imbued the whole film with. The narrative progresses slowly, as if Bresson was making a nouvelle vague Godard film. The elliptical editing carves something that is more poetry than straight forward narrative, even if the mind behind it is clearly philosophical. Indeed if Malick were around before the age of cinema, he would have been Walt Whitman, Jackson Pollock, Mark Twain. This is a work that isn’t epic, it’s epochal. Perhaps with his next film, also working with Emmanuel Lubezki, “The Tree Of Life”, being delayed until next year, Malick will take the crown for the next decade, too.

There is the cliche of remarking that you’ve just seen the best movie ever made. It’s usually a moment of adrenaline or fashion-consciousness, and the grandeur is eclipsed by your next favorite movie, a few months or weeks down the line.

Being fully aware of that cliche, I will say for myself that I invoked it recently for The New World, but here’s the exception: I have been reserving that distinction for a film called Koyaanisqatsi since my mid-teens. Given the intervening two decades of nothing much to rattle me, this film is an absolute epiphany on the scale of literally improving the vernacular of cinema.

Whenever I had to defend my answer “Koyaanisqatsi” to puzzled looks after the innocent question, “What’s your favorite movie?”, it always involved the inevitable failure to describe what it’s actually about. There haven’t been many like it (aside from the subsequent two sequels in its trilogy, and the “spinoffs” by its cinematographer in Baraka and Chronos), though Koyaanisqatsi arguably shook the ground that moviemaking is built on even today. The closest populist reference to the style of Koyaanisqatsi is stop-motion photography of landscapes, such as unnaturally fast-moving clouds across the desert. And of course, there was the “minimalist”/maximalist music of Philip Glass.

Some have tried to call this “environmental cinema.” If they were referring to the existence of pretty vistas, they were missing the point. Much like minimalism in the development of contemporary music in the late 20th Century, cinema found a language that moderated its attention down to context and pulse. Storytelling through moving pictures has usually not been so attentive. Largely this is a humanistic instinct, which isn’t all bad. We are drawn to stories that enlarge the human experience — ultimately a harmless dishonesty that fakes some kind of order to human behavior. But the braver thing to do is to depict — as a first priority — man and woman within their environment, between humans and non-humans, and between humans and other human civilizations. The storytelling that manifests from such a paradigm will lack in personal drama what it makes up for in a rich experience of “thinking and moving” pictures.

Looking back on the title belt of Koyaanisqatsi within my little world of all-time favorites, I can see now why The New World rattled me so well. The two films’ agendas and esthetics are one in the same — the closest genre to these ironically is science fiction, which can, at its best, evoke the awe of realizing that humans dwell within something dramatically more important, and too important to understand. Better to make your point by observing that truth with humility, than to wrap things up with a slick cut and a thud! After seeing The New World, I literally doubted my ability to see any other film the same way again. That is a “review” sounding like hyperbole, but sometimes you just wake up to something totally right. The New World is the greatest film ever made.

terrence malick hit the spot again, this time with a movie based on history.,
this is just like the thin red line: beautiful, artistic, deep, and insightful, only this time malick shows his great vision about life in the smaller scope.,
again, malick doesn’t do action or fluff which is very hard to resist in this kind of movie, he gets to the heart of the humanity in his stories as usual. so, if you like terrence malick’s style you will not be disappointed by this, but if you don’t, you might think this is one of the worst movie ever made..

Obviously the visuals are superb in this film. That would come as no surprise for anyone who’s seen a Malick film. But this film is more than visual beauty. It’s about the beauty of spirit. Q’orianka Kilcher captures that beauty perfectly. Colin Farrell, Christopher Plummer, Christian Bale and the rest of the cast also do a great job. The first half of the film was wonderful but in the second half I did lose some interest. None the less it picks back up for a resonating and poignant ending.