Anybody who knows me knows that a Terrence Malick film is a very big event both in the film world and in my world (hopefully my world will be the film world someday... but for now I'm just a spectator). Unfortunately, the initial announcement that Malick was releasing a new film was dampened by the fact that it was about Pocahontas. Wtf right? Yes, wtf. I suppose...

How Malick would treat the subject matter was a pretty big concern, especially since I couldn't get a live action version of the Disney movie out of my head. Whether there was even a romantic relationship between John Smith and Pocahontas is a subject of much debate and from the research I did online, the consensus seems to be that they were at the very least very good friends (you know how rumors spread when boys and girls start hanging out together too much...). Fair enough, the film was being marketed as a romance along the lines of Titanic. I figured this was more a marketing ploy and less actually what the film was like. Another point of concern, brought up by a friend, was that Malick might romanticize the Native Americans, something he seems entirely capable of in the wake of The Thin Red Line. A valid concern but once again I gave Malick the benefit of the doubt and went into the film hoping to love it.

The film opens with a gorgeous shot of some trees and clouds reflected on the surface of some water. That's when it hit me that this was a Terrence Malick film I was watching and it had been eight years since I had last been able to view one for the first time.

After the opening series of shots, there's a really bad title sequence that bugged me for a bunch of reasons, none of which are worth going into, you have to see it. As soon as the unfortunate titles are gone we see ships finally reaching shores of the new world as Native Americans watch from afar. At this point I was a bit overcome with awe by the idea of landing in a world you know absolutely nothing about.

The extent of the differences in the two worlds that collided at that moment never had really registered with me until the breathtaking opening of this film. All those years of U.S. history never really conveyed just how amazing, scary, and ultimately sad that this even was. In the Thin Red Line, Malick explored the various things in the world that oppose eachother philosophically, spiritually, and in the material world. With the New World he once again pits two opposing sides against eachother and you just know it's going to be ugly. But, as ugly as it is, it's also incredibly fascinating.

The portrayal of Native Americans in the film is something that made me nervous even while watching the film because I have no idea what that culture was like and as a result have no idea how accurate the portrayal is. The only thing I had to go on was a National Georgraphic article I had read about the extensive research that went into recreating the time period. What I can say is that the world of the film is entirely convincing and the cinematography used to capture this world is really great (aside from a bit too much handheld work when it really wasn't necessary).

Um, I've written a lot and it's not very focused nor well written. I also am getting tired of writing since I feel like very very few people are going to read this... I'll wrap up with a series of comments: