"The New World" (2005) - Movie Review

My second Terrence Malick feature and am in love with his style, the most tender style in wrapping it meticulously and comfortably to its stillness undisturbed and purity woven in tandem to give it the decoration the subject beckons. This is “The New World” a traditional love story told in very much traditional way only that it goes to phenomenal authenticity. It is given by the daringness of a director fuelled by the obsession in achieving the reflection of immaculateness.

As the English sends more colonizers to the Americas in 1607, there is Captain John Smith (Colin Farrell) who will be falling in love with a young princess (Q'orianka Kilcher) of the Native American group of that region. There will be next to nothing conversations and abundance of body language in between them which would not make us in anyway not believe in their eternal love. Known for his aggression but never seen, Smith is captured by the tribe and rescued by the beauty. She learns his language and he reads her waves of passion and the undiscovered love he did not make time for.

The greatest nature sceneries over greeting cards and photographs would shy in embarrassment of this spectacle of the serene virgin beauty. The muddy rivers rippling sporadically but has made a peace with the surroundings to keep it low to be in that zone of submitting to the naturalness. In photography of Emmanuel Lubezki he does not disturb that peace rather captures it to its atom of being what it is, origin of nature. But it is not shiny ornament with glow and vacuumed of substance. It is the love story performed in many films with sweetness and sorrow, buttery and bogus and sometimes real but not the kind Malick does.

The questions of the conscience, the decisions and the entity of which we all take a vacation from to be that smiley faces of merry are the broken lines and unspoken words between each other for Smith and Kilcher’s character. They bury it as many would have in those times of existence based on King’s measure of laud and availability of food and fear of scarcity. Strangers are destroyers and trust existed only among the clan. To go out of it is an invite to pillaging and looting. In that the young girl falls for the man. The man while with her forgets those qualms of reality. He believes in the dream he is going through. He knows the bite of reality is yards away and despite that he gives in to the feeling. “Love..Shall we deny it when it visits us” asks Smith.

The circumstances comes for the lovers to depart and Smith being bound more by the responsibility and duly understanding the situation he has got in leaves the girl giving his fake death through his men and put her in grief and pain to continue his conquest of new lands. She goes mad and is unable to grasp the pain which has embraced her with the slow actions of bringing her down day by day. Along comes a widower John Rolfe (Christian Bale) seeing the loss in her eyes as he sees in his heart. He takes her to his tobacco field and gently he places himself side by her. The slightest looks and the submerged twists of those lips called as smile are hopes of love to re-emerge in this broken beauty. She asks how the will of her has put the happiness in demise. Constantly her quest for the answers to those questions towards the emotions of pain, love and happiness make her gloomy and a walking dead. Rolfe understands it and asks for her to marry him. She cries unknown of what she is going through. Is she feels guilty by the lost past or embarrassed and shied by the kindness of this man or the sterility of her emotions for everything around her?

It is poetry. It is painting. It is a symbol. It is an art. It is everything art is characterized by. The conversations are replaced by breezy photographic motions. The fields green and yellow, the waters deep and shallow with trees hiding these and the sunshine igniting those makes you surrender for the untouched glimpse of that part of the history. And it is not a hindrance or deviation away from the people in the film. They are bound and separated by the love and duty. But they are in terms with their happenings and actions. They respect theirs and others emotions with a maturity hardly to imagine.

James Horner’s music takes two themes for the two loves. Between Smith and the girl is the loud declaration of the unknown territory of love to both and a calm touch of piano for the hope of lost love between Rolfe and the girl grown into a woman. In a story of these three people, we are fantasized by those tranquil pictures in between them. It takes the camera with kindness and gentility feeding even the pain with tender and acceptance. This is a visual treat not for special effects but a celebration of original images of nature and its virgin beauty.