Movie Review: The New World

I missed the first two minutes of this film. Each sweep of the camera is so exquisite that I can’t help wanting to watch the film again just to see how it started.

The film is based on a true story, the discovery of the New World, and its native inhabitants. It is beautifully crafted. The first sweeps, where man is covered in metal or plastered with paint and feathers, are powerful. The untouched wilderness fills us with longing and quiet respect. German born Q'Orianka Kilcher, which means "golden eagle" in Quechua, puts in an authentic performance as the Indian princess (who is not given a name). She is wonderful to watch, and it is around her that the New World, at first, seems to turn. Her calm, compassionate spirit costs her tribe dearly.

Will Farrell puts in a restrained but realistic performance as Captain Smith. The film is beautifully balanced, and at times feels like a window into the wilderness of long ago, and the wild, authentic character of human beings. The film represents a sensitive and delicate appreciation of the miraculous: in life, love and nature. This film brings something that we don’t often see, to the cinema: purity and honor of a person and an environment.

Terence Mallick (The Thin Red Line)directs The New World, and shows us human beings in all their guises. It does not take sides, but perhaps it asks us, which side of ourselves we’ll choose to be. It is a better representation of the Native Americans and the British than Dances With Wolves, and that’s saying something. The images in the last 15 minutes of the film (I won’t give them away) are particularly fascinating, as we once again see our civilization as both absurd and comforting.
We learn, I think, that something that people once had, a closeness to each other, and to nature, has been lost, despite the awesome towers and machines that we have. Perhaps, the film also seems to convey, it is a basic sense of life, the waters shining with light around us, and grasses whispering, that is now beyond our reach.

When the Indian princess puts on western garb, including heeled shoes, we have the chance to see how absurdly civil we are, rigid and disconnected from ourselves and our world.
It is through her that we connect to the goodness of the Earth, and ponder with a quiet smile the meaning of Christopher Plummer’s words, drifting in the background: “Our inexperience is our wisdom.” It is through her that we wonder about the goodness in ourselves.

This is a very rich, very deep and touching film, and it is easily the film I have enjoyed the most so far this year.