‘The New World’ puts realism above action

As the audience shuffled out of the most accurately portrayed historical film in years, there was a palpable feeling of disappointment and rejection. One person mentioned that it was more like a movie made for TV while others simply didn’t get it.

From these comments, one could gather that this movie was a waste of time or only one to see once all other possibilities were extinguished. However, this is not the case.

“The New World” tells the history of what happened when the English first settle Jamestown. From its broad beginnings, it goes on to tell the story of John Smith (Colin Farrell) who was taken captive by Native Americans and whose life was eventually saved by Pocahontas (Q’Orianka Kilcher), Chief Powhatan’s favorite daughter.

After a time Smith and Pocahontas fall in love, but Smith returns to Jamestown and explores more of the new continent.

Pocahontas is found to have helped the colonists and after being banished from her tribe lives with the settlers at Jamestown. Eventually she meets and falls in love with John Rolfe (Christian Bale) and goes back to England with him.

This was not a normal movie by any means, but that is exactly what made it so special. Its only plot came from what we know of history, which made it slow at times and devoid of action scenes.

The primary goal seemed two fold: Telling an accurate story, and setting the mood for the audience. It embraces what American film has been turning away from for years.

Director Terrence Malick simply sat back and let the story tell itself, without the distraction of side plots involving drama or action that never took place. It was obvious that a great amount of thought went into the visual aspects of this film when the audience was shown pure mood-setting images for close to 30 seconds at a time and witnessed the extremely realistic costumes of the Native Americans as well as the Englishmen who would eventually settle at Jamestown.

Another important aspect of the film is the balance that Malick showed while portraying Native Americans and English settlers. He did an excellent job of showing the audience both sides of the issue of colonization and the true worries of both parties involved.

All the acting in this film was superb, but the performances of Christian Bale and Q’Orianka Kilcher (a film rookie) were truly astounding. These actors never broke from character and added a whole level of seriousness and reality to the events on screen.