The New World

Terrence Malick's The New World (2005) is a take on the story of how Europeans met and fought with the Native Americans when they found American and tried to establish settlements. Terrence Malick is known for making only a few movies during a long period of time so The New World is at the moment his latest film. The film mostly follows an American Indian girl who at first falls in love with an Englishman, and then struggles to live among the newcomers.

The New World flows like a poem, an epic poem that touches on various subjects and themes. The poetic structure is certainly admirable. The film abandons and takes on so many different things that it becomes a little disorienting to watch the film - and it never seems to fully grasp anything. It does try hard to properly handle its content, but the result is utterly uneven. The inner monologues are probably the biggest offender in the film. When you are just about to be enthralled by some other aspect in the film, the monologues come up and slap you in the face to wake you up. Sometimes they work, but mostly they are just pretentious and shallow attempts to be more "intelligent".

While watching the film I was wondering if the film ends properly due to the charming poetic structure - because I remembered that when I watched the film for the first time the ending came abruptly. This time I felt the film ended on a satisfying note - "the poem faded out".

It is no surprise that Emmanuel Lubezki worked as the DP on The New World: the cinematography is beautiful, intense and captivating. There is simply no better way to glorify nature than the way Lubezki portrays the film's world. The musical score of the film is subtle and sometimes a bit weird. It left me cold sometimes - especially when it should have NOT done that.

The acting in The New World is more or less phenomenal. Kilcher makes a great debut and Farrell performs nicely in a subdued way (yet again). Christian Bale is the big star again - his performance is simply breathtaking.

All in all, The New World is a calm and poetic film that suffers from being a little too uneven.

Score: 6 out of 10