STORY STUDY - CRITERION WEEK “826. The New World”

When an island filled with peaceful natives gets invaded by “civilized” people from across the seas, you know it’s never going to end well.

Directed and written by Terrence Malick, The New World is the story of “the princess” and her romance with two settlers from England who have traveled to her part of the world to found a colony known to history as Jamestown.

The first of these settlers, of course, is John Smith, whom she learns English from.

The last is John Rolfe, whom she eventually marries.

As with Malick’s other films, the film is absolutely gorgeous to look at. How he films nature is breathtaking, and feels very zen. You feel like you’re there, and you want to go there.

When it feels disgusting, uncomfortable, and dirty, which is usually how the Jamestown is depicted, you feel it too.

How the story is told is going to split people who like traditional narrative storytelling. While the Princess is introduced first, the story starts off clearly with John Smith as the main character. He gets captured by Natives, gets saved by the Princess from being killed, and he learns their culture and their language.

Then, Smith exits the story, now focusing on the Princess and her heartbreak, as well as her English education, and eventually finding love again with Rolfe.

One of the interesting choices the film makes is that the Princess is never named Pocahontas, which is why I keep calling her the Princess. The one time a character gets to call her Pocahontas, she’s halted by another character, telling her she doesn’t go by the name anymore. She does get an English name when she gets baptized, Rebecca.

The voice-over dialogue is spoken in a very poetic manner (though cynical people might call “poetic” as “pretentious”) but what’s confusing is the dialogue will occur between two characters, and the voice-over will occur in between the dead space to showcase what the characters are thinking in the moment. Sometimes it breaks the flow of the conversation/scene, and it just gets a little hard to follow.

For anyone who is worried that the film is another romanticized version of the Pocahontas story… unfortunately, it is. Once again, she is portrayed as a little older when she meets John Smith, and even the age she is portrayed here, it’s still creepy. Really, how this film stands out on its own, especially compared to the widely known Disney film Pocahontas, is that John Smith actually lives among the natives before being returned to his people. So, it’s more like Avatar and The Last Samurai instead.

All of these observations are based on the extended cut of the film that is only available through the Criterion Collections (which has three separate cuts) so the length of the shots differ. It’s all still the same story and character arcs.

I got introduced to the film vaguely when it first came out in 2005, but I finally watched it when the Criterion Collection announced it would be releasing it, I finally got around to watching it. I’m finally able to take in and appreciate the filmmaking aspect of it, as opposed to when I was younger, I only care about proper story and narrative telling, which this film breaks a lot.

The New World is actually one of the few Malick films where it is easily watchable for a wider audience. Despite the story shifting focus on its protagonist, their character arcs are easily digestible just like any ensemble film. Then, there is just the cinematography, where each shot is like a beautiful painting.