To say that The New World is utterly bewitching only half-explains the experience. Director Terence Malick is a ‘serious’ movie-goer’s movie-director who splits audiences and critics alike. His epic war meditation, The Thin Red Line (1998) arrived just as Spielberg was shocking audiences with that other war film and the contrast could not have been greater. One was as cerebral as the other was visceral, both were remarkable visions of humanity. Malick has stretched another large canvas to paint The New World, and the results are just as remarkable.

Revisiting the story of Pocahontas, he seeks to recreate a sublime experience of primeval America when, in 1607, a boat load of savages arrive from Europe. The haunting, if not terrifying, reality of nature erupts on the
screen as Malick brings us as close to 17^th century wilderness as we’re ever likely to get. There’s a sublime beauty that establishes the tenor of the story, and the tone of the film. Action-junkies best leave now for The New World is a long, slow revelation.

Marked by a single scene of violence, this is otherwise a love story between John Smith (Farrell) and a chief’s daughter (Kilcher). It proves fatal for Smith and nearly as much for his replacement (Bale) who takes her to the old world in a comparison discourse on primitive cultures. Many people with an eye on a watch will despair for this seemingly endless chronicle. Those who stay the journey will be rewarded by a film that passes from cinema into a lyrical object of near poetry.

// COLIN FRASER