You won’t find these at the cinemas regrettably but on TV. Lately, there have been several series that look like epics in that they are cinematic across a wide canvas telling cracking stories in vigorous and visceral ways. The two new Spartacus series create a whole new Roman aesthetic – combining razor sharp scripts and interesting dialogue with comic strip ultra violence, outrageous sex and a compelling revenge plot. The look and feel is hot dirty and sweaty and the CGI is graphic and excellent. All of the story spreads around the naked ambition of Batiatus, the lanister, played with gusto by John Hannah and his wife Lucretia, Lucy Lawless, and their vicious and implacable drive to raise their social standing. The two series may be garish and certainly not for the prudish but they have epic visions and would not look out of place in the cinema.

The second of my new epics is Game of Thrones. Where the Spartacus series are tightly bound by their location, Game of Thrones has much loftier ambitions in terms of scope and storytelling. Think Lord of the Rings meets The Godfather. This is a full blooded fantasy thriller, again with gratuitous sex on occasion, but populated by many dark and devious characters inhabiting many diverse lands. It has a feeling more of Elizabeth with its foreboding and suspense and some surprising twists. Don’t expect your favourite characters to prevail.

The portrayal of the various lands and their peoples adds enormous interest. It takes a while to take in the host of characters and cultures but it is worth it. The sets themselves are of epic proportions and the opening credits are spectacular in showing the territory covered by the story. This is probably why it could not have been made into a standard epic film and needs the series format for the plot and the characters to be absorbed by the audience. The Winterfell folk are portrayed as dour Northerners whilst those at King’s Landing are devious Southerners and the savage horse tribes across the sea add yet more colour and depth to the plot and backdrop. We have yet to see how the monsters from beyond The Wall will affect the balance of power. Hopefully, this will manifest itself in the second series. One of the revelations of the series is the performance of Peter Dinklage as Tyrian Lanister, the dwarf son of the fearsome Tywin Lanister, who treads a fine line between lovable rogue and monster like his father. Add into the mix the possibility of dragons and fearsome creatures beyond The Wall and I cannot wait for the next series.

A different kind of new epic is Boardwalk Empire. It is famously known for having the involvement of Martin Scorcese (who also directs the pilot episode) as a producer and having a major part of the Boardwalk at Atlantic City rebuilt in painstaking detail. You could dismiss this as yet another gangster  film or series but you would not be giving the series the credit it deserves. It can be seen as a political story of how Atlantic City was built and is a microcosm of the birth of the modern USA. It shows you the early beginnings of the Mafia and the blood stained struggles for power with the fledgling FBI beginning its rise to prominence after the first World War.

At the centre of it is Enoch (Nucky) Thompson, treasurer of Atlantic City, trying to maintain his hold of the marionette strings in the face of challenges to his authority from outsiders. Played by Steve Buscemi, Thompson is a bit of an enigma, the ultimate cool political wheeler dealer who starts to show compassion to the young widow played by Kelly Macdonald whose abusive husband is murdered on his instructions. Interwoven into the story are well known characters, Al Capone, “Lucky” Luciano and Arnold Rothstein, but the real character of the story is the Boardwalk itself. You have to marvel at the sets and the feel of the series. It reeks of the 1920s and the formal set pieces in the theatre transport you to that era effortlessly. Quality acting and attention to detail rank highly here. The one thing I did not particularly like was the pace of the action. It seemed interminably slow in parts, interspersed with occasional bouts of gratuitous sex that did not spur the plot along sufficiently. A little bit self indulgent if you ask me but I can forgive that for the memorable moments and plot twists. The teasing last episode of the first series is a cliffhanger intimating that all the people that Nucky depended on to maintain his hold of power, including his brother, were now plotting to get rid of him for their own various reasons. Friends becoming enemies. Watch your back Nuck.

Maybe this is a new category of filmed entertainment – the epic series. TV has become the natural home for such sprawling ambitious pieces that cannot fit into the cinema format. CGI has come of age and is becoming less expensive. It has become the medium to create the epic feel to the series. When directors of the stature of Spielberg and Scorcese start working within the TV medium it is time to take epic TV projects seriously.

Instead of using one or two professional cameras he could use several IPhones from different shooting angles to generate a very fluid movement and energy to the story. There may be limitations of the kit especially outdoors and in long shots but if the story is mainly an “internal” one this may not cause any problems. In theory, anyone with a decent camera phone could do the same and there are many experiments on YouTube to testify to the effort. However, when a director of his standing says he is going to do it we all should sit up and listen. The results should be interesting in the very least given his track record so far with shocking and disturbing material.

In the same year came one of the best of the recent westerns. Glory was the story of the first black regiment to fight for the North in the civil war and how they overcame prejudice from their own side to gain respect and dignity for blacks in America. Directed by Edward Zwick, it lit the tinderbox for the careers of a young Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman and told a moving story about the difficulties faced by them and the young white officer charged with leading their regiment.  The ending always brings a lump to my throat when I see it. Oscar glory followed with 3 gongs for best supporting actor (Washington) and best cinematography (Freddie Francis).

Westerns became cool again. The next year we were treated to Dances With Wolves (1990), a stirring Kevin Costner western, looking at prairie life from the point of view of the native Americans and a disaffected cavalry officer. Costner collected 2 Oscars for it and went on to make other westerns but never reached the heights that he did with this film. Open Range was a return to form but Dances With Wolves was the pinnacle.

Clint Eastwood successfully returned to westerns in 1992 both acting in and directing Unforgiven. This film was a gritty and realistic account of how Clint’s character is paid to avenge the disfigurement of a prostitute. It is a character-led piece with occasional bursts of explosive and bloody action. The supporting cast are pitch perfect and some of the myths of the west are exposed. It won 4 Oscars including best picture and best director.

Gettysburg (1993) directed by Ronald F. Maxwell recreated the famous civil war battle and gained many admirers for its attention to detail and stirring battle scenes. It also spawned a prequel – Gods and Generals (2003) – showing the events leading up to civil war.

So the western is alive and well and can still thrive in the mainstream. When Spielberg does mini series about westerns (Into The West) and old stories can be reinvigorated to reach a new generation then it will always have a place in Hollywood.

The most famous mutation of the traditional western was the spaghetti western. These were films made largely in Europe (Spain being the most believable location to double as Arizona or Texas) by Italians mainly that created an identifiable sub genre with its own characteristics.

Important directors on the world stage came out of this movement such as Sergio Leone and Bernardo Bertolucci. Leone put his case forward as one of the world’s great directors with such films as the Fistful of Dollars trilogy and Once upon a Time in the West, a candidate for the greatest western of all time. Bertolucci, at this stage in his career was involved as a scriptwriter for Leone and emerged later on as a fine director in his own right outside the western genre.

There were scores of spaghetti westerns made during the period 1965-1980. They were recognisable for their stylistic differences to the traditional westerns. In particular, the use of closeups of the characters’ expressive faces usually dripping with sweat or smoking a cigarette before an explosively violent scene ramped up the tension in these westerns. The villains were colourful and hideous and psychopathic. No horrific act was out of their range. They even made that Hollywood western stalwart, Henry Fonda, into a steely-eyed child killer in the epic Once Upon a Time in the West.

Heroes were not the archetypal heroes of old westerns. They were much more complex. More like anti heroes. Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name in the Fistful of Dollars trilogy typifies this. He is probably the least disagreeable character in the film but is no angel himself. In Once Upon  a Time in the West the main protagonists are symbols more than characters telling the painful story of the opening up of the west. None is without sin but there is a chance of redemption by the end for some of them.

Spaghetti westerns are violent and sometimes unpredictable interms of plot and ending. One notable example of this is The Great Silence directed by Sergio Corbucci. It is sometimes referred to as the Alpine western with its backdrop of mountains and snow and is a very dark tale with a completely miserable ending. No heroes riding off into the sunset here. Very little light relief during the film aswell. Italian directors were definitiely experimenting with stories, characters and visuals to create unique films that could still be called westerns.

No self-respecting spaghetti western was complete without a quirky yet mesmerising soundtrack from Ennio Morricone that emphasised the difference between this western and the traditional Hollywood western. Sometimes beautiful and evocative, sometimes downright irritating, Morricone’s soundtracks make the spaghetti westerns even more distinctive.

The western was also influenced from further east, Japan. Hollywood film makers saw the upsurge of spaghetti westerns and knew they would have to up their game. So they looked for new storylines and John Sturges used Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai as the template for The Magnificent Seven. Both of these films were successful in their own genre. Leone used the basic plot of Yojimbo directed by Kurosawa as his base line for A Fistful of Dollars. And yet Kurosawa openly acknowledged his regard for John Ford’s westerns. So chicken… egg?

Despite all the critical acclaim given to westerns, all was not well. By the mid 1980s the western was dead as a genre. Nobody was making significant western films. What happened? I’ll talk about that next time.

But the western started to become more of an art form in cinema when John Ford made his Cavalry trilogy in the forties and fifties. They coined the term “horse opera” and could be seen as works of art. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Fort Apache and Rio Grande all  had the panache of a director at the top of his game with action and the western genre.

However, the most important film he made was The Searchers bringing out a performance by John Wayne, his long time leading man, which is the best of his career. The Searchers also uses the interiors and exteriors to suggest danger and isolation both physical and psychological with a strong performance by the supporting cast. It explores the issues of racism, friendship, loss and grief within the boundaries of the the western genre. It is probably the most complete western film of all time – strong in story, cinematic image, action and acting.

Perhaps the most over-looked and under-rated John Ford western is My Darling Clementine. Someone described it as more of a poem than a story. More lyrical in pace and narrative. It was a retelling of the gunfight at the OK corral but uses pacing and imagery to provide a unique beat to the film. A gem of a film by a master director.

And who can forget John Ford’s initiation into westerns with Stagecoach giving an young and then unknown actor called John Wayne his big break.

Later period John Ford westerns such as The Horse Soldiers, Sergeant Rutledge and Two Rode Together did not hit the heights of the earlier films although there was a brief return to form in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. He did direct the civil war segment of How The West Was Won and finished his westerns with Cheyenne Autumn, an unusual film of its time that looked at the west from the point of view of the native Americans. This was ground-breaking in its day.

A John Ford western could be characterised by ravishing visuals of the landscape with Monument Valley providing the inevitable backdrop in many of his westerns. Dust and desert, sunrises and sunsets, rousing soundtracks and music, exquisite action and horsemanship, strong story lines and usually some humorous scenes to counter balance the serious and dangerous aspects of the film. He blended it together to produce moving and rousing entertainment and, some would argue, high art as well. He is one of the first “auteurs” as he had his own signature on most of his films. That indelible stamp influenced many directors that followed and was the baseline of development for the western genre.

Post John Ford westerns started to diversify but all owed a debt of gratitude to Ford for setting the benchmark by which westerns were to be measured.

This post just sprang to mind as I have watched a few classic films recently that serve to illustrate the point very well.

James Cameron does an incredible job with “Aliens”. We see the lifeboat craft drifting aimlessly in space with Ripley and the cat (Jonesy, I think) still in suspended animation. The door is then burnt open as they are rescued by a deep space salvage team. As Ripley recuperates on a space station near earth, Cameron uses an inventive dream sequence to wrong foot the audience. Ripley’s mind is messed up and we begin to empathise with her immediately particularly as no one seems to want to believe her about the existence of the alien monsters. It’s like a pantomime response but very effective. The rest of the cast are saying they don’t exist while Ripley and the audience are effectively shouting “They’re behind you!”. We’ve seen the previous film, we know what they can do. Even worse to come, as Ripley is “on trial” for destroying the Nostromo and she loses her pilot licence. How unfair, we say. And she finds out that she has been in hypersleep for around seventy years. Her child has grown up, lived a full life and died before she returned. How terrible for her. We are hooked! And then she finds out that the planet where the alien craft crashed is now colonised by a group of terraformers including families with children. This provides the motivation for Ripley to return to the planet as an advisor (and her need to regain her pilot’s licence).

All this is played out very skilfully through fleshing out the back story with some emotional twists to provide the setting for the rest of the film and draw the audience in for the ride. Excellent.

Another good example of a stunning first twenty minutes is a film I have mentioned before in these posts – the remake of “Dawn of the Dead” directed by Zak Snyder. All of the George Romero fans know what is about to happen but the way it is achieved is quite stunning. We see the horror unfolding through the eyes of the nurse (Sarah Polley) as she is coming to the end of her shift at the hospital.  This is inter-cut with newsreels of unrest in the world gradually expanding into anarchy. We’ve all seen news items with video of riots and conflict before. But it quickly shows us that the anarchy is due to a mysterious infection. The nurse unwittingly goes about her routine and leaves the hospital just as patients start arriving with the infection. As she leaves the hospital we see the legs of a man sticking out from an ambulance. Is he infected? Is he dead? No, he’s just resting before the next call out. Phew! The audience starts feeling for the safety of the nurse. Something bad is happening. We know but does she? We want to shout out to warn her.

Cut to suburbia and her car driving back home. Nothing yet to suggest anything abnormal although the tension has been ramped up through the unease felt earlier. She has a conversation with a little girl. But there is a tangible unease established. She is the innocent about to be threatened. She arrives home and goes to sleep with her husband. All is normal until they are woken up by a hungry zombie who just happens to be the little girl she talked to before. Her husband is bitten and turns into a zombie and in turn tries to bite her! Talk about a maiden in peril. She manages to narrowly escape out of the bathroom window and get into her car only to be confronted by a scene of utter carnage and mayhem with neighbours shooting, killing and eating each other, cars crashing and fires breaking out all over suburbia.

The scenes are so effective because that is so like our home, a comforting if boring environment to return to at the end of a hard day’s work. Yet again we are drawn into the story with great skill. In this film,  our “little castle”, our homely comfort blanket has been ripped to shreds at the beginning of the film and we are empathising with the nurse, frightened and at a loss to know what to do next. The rape and mutilation of our home life is shown graphically in the film in a series of scenes as the Sarah Polley character tries to drive out of her suburban estate. Neighbours with guns shooting at anything, homicidal zombies chase the living to taste their flesh, cars collide and crash. There is even an aerial shot (with CGI) showing the mayhem from the air. Will she survive, or won’t she? Who will save her? Or, how will she save herself from this insidious disaster? Brilliant set up for the rest of the film.

Perhaps, one of the most brilliant beginnings to a film must be “Apocalypse Now”. In the opening sequence over the credits, we are shown a patch of jungle with instrumental music from the Doors (The End) playing on the soundtrack. It evokes an oriental and exotic feeling. We hear helicopters whizzing overhead and suddenly the jungle bursts into flames. We know, without a spoken word, we are in Vietnam in the late 1960s early 1970s. Brilliantly concise use of images and sound to set the scene for the movie. If that wasn’t good enough we are treated to a second sequence where the back story is narrated by the Martin Sheen character, a burnt-out special forces assassin on the edge of sanity who, as we find later can only find normality and comfort when on a “mission”, in this case the assassination of a renegade American colonel leading a native army against the North Vietnamese. There are many questions asked in the film about who is sane in a world of insanity and this beginning sets the scene beautifully for the journey to the heart of darkness.

One last and very different example is “Babel” – a recent film which weaves a story that spans a number of different countries and cultures. It intrigues the audience. It starts several seemingly unrelated stories cutting between them and as an audience we begin to feel curious about where this is going. Each story is interesting in its own right but we are not asked to empathise with the charcters involved. It is more intellectual. How are these stories connected? The director gradually unveils the connections throughout the film in very clever ways but you do not know the whole story until the end. It uses the audience’s collective curiosity to establish commitment and interest in the film.

Getting the audience involved as early as possible through emotion, curiosity or clever use of visuals and symbol can set the tone for the rest of the film.

Its origins are from a book by the acclaimed science fiction author, Robert Heinlein, but, after seeing the film, you might think it came from a comic book or graphic novel.

Paul Verhoeven, best known as director of “Basic Instinct” is at the helm for this roller coaster of a movie

It is at the confluence of several film genres. Is it a war movie? Very much so. Plenty of bug zapping action and camaraderie amongst the ranks. It could actually be a cowboy movie if you substitute hostile injuns for the arachnids. Is it a horror movie? Well, yes. The arachnids are pretty darn terrifying and the liberal sightings of gore and body parts tell of horrific deaths. Is it a science fiction movie? Yes. But only because it is set in the future. Not 1984 more Beverley Hills 90210. The CGI effects are pretty special and create a wonderful, exciting and dangerous world inhabited by the cast.

But, more than anything, it is a teen movie with all the angst and clichés of young people and their relationships. There are coming of age themes involved but Verhoeven concentrates on the beautiful young things and their sexual awareness. It wouldn’t be Paul Verhoeven film without the titillation of lingering shots of naked breasts.

A teen movie wrapped up in a war/ horror/cowboy cloak with a clanking political message about totalitarianism or fascism. All in the style of a comic book or cartoon. Weird. Yet it somehow works. The story trots along at a cracking pace with action sequences at just the right points in the film. Whilst there is only a little empathy with the main characters it is enough to keep you hooked until the next stunning action sequence. The camerawork and photography is stunningly garish. The acting is enthusiastic rather than exemplary.

The politics are interesting in that the world has clearly evolved as a totalitarian state with the government outwardly focussing on the bug threat and ruthlessly suppressing any dissent. Citizens follow the will of the state. Propaganda is used as a device to ram home the message. Not entirely convincing and none too subtle but it gives you a feel of the oppressive environment these young people are being brought up in.

The bugs are the main feature though. Their sharp edges and stabbing pincers are used to great effect in dispatching many fleshy and vulnerable humans. They swarm and are killing machines and take a lot of teamwork and rounds of ammo to take out. The brain bug sort of takes away some of the menace even though it can suck the brains out of your head. Marvellous creations.

Still we are suspending disbelief throughout the film and apart from some continuity and medical issues towards the end of the film. (Why does Carmen lose sooo much blood and yet at the end is smiling and up with the rest of them in the triumphant finale of the capture of the brain bug). Maybe it’s because we aren’t meant to take it too seriously and that it really is meant to be a live action cartoon.

It has proved so popular that it has spawned a franchise of sorts. The second film – Starship Troopers 2 – is a bit of a let down with its downbeat feel and less of the teen movie.  However, the third – Starship Troopers 3 – Marrauder -  goes more for the feel of the original and back to some of its themes. It shows how the original teen hero – Rico – has grown up during the bug wars and more of the politics of the totalitarian state. Whilst not wholly successful it is more of a return to form with the original screenplay writer now at the helm and Paul Verhoeven producing for a change.

Starship Troopers is  a high octane romp for the teen generation with references for older audiences as well. And strangely hypnotic. Possibly, because it panders to our more base instincts (geddit) and prejudices. What odds on Starship Troopers 4?

]]> http://films.davesinfocafe.com/starship-troopers-2/feed/ 0 http://films.davesinfocafe.com/southern-comfort/ http://films.davesinfocafe.com/southern-comfort/#comments Wed, 07 Jan 2009 04:34:37 +0000 Dave http://films.davesinfocafe.com/?p=169 Every so often I see a film on TV that I remember from long ago that surprises me. Southern Comfort is one such film that I feel is a hidden gem. Not only has it got much to offer cinematically speaking but it has balls and attitude.

Southern Comfort is a film that follows the (ultimately tragic) exploits of a troop of National Guardsmen on a training exercise in the swamps of Lousianna as they upset some local Cajun hunters and pay a shockingly high price for their misdemeanours.

The troop is a standard mix of rednecks, loners and bureaucrats who are better at warring with themselves than the enemy. There are no big stars just an ensemble of excellent character actors – Keith Carradine, Fred Ward and Powers Boothe most notably – who carry the story forward in a believable fashion. Tension abounds from the beginning as the disparate troop argues and fights within itself. A tragic encounter with some local Cajun hunters leaves them fighting for their lives as they become the prey.

The tone is set from the start as the beautifully evocative slide guitar soundtrack by Ry Cooder creates a mood of foreboding and alienation, something tragic is coming our way. (He does something similar in Paris, Texas). This complements the stunning cinematography of the swamps creating an oppressively claustrophobic stage for the action to be played out. Its timeless and directionless and alien to the city boys in the troop. All the troop wants to do is get outta there but which way?

The director is Walter Hill, a director most famous at this point for his controversially violent film The Warriors which traces the attempts of an urban gang to get back to their own turf across town. During the film they have to cross other gangs’ turf and survive to reach their goal. One could argue that Southern Comfort is a grown up riff on that story with the troop entering (and messing with) Cajun territory. Certainly the violence meted out is quite graphic and resonant with the Warriors. But there are more levels to the film than that. It can be seen as a post Vietnam analysis of the USA, a country with lots of divisions and arguments and opinions and attitudes struggling to come to terms with resolving conflict. It could be seen as an allegory of Vietnam itself with an arrogant army going into an alien landscape and coming up against a very different culture and getting a very bloody nose.

The ending is not surprising in what happens but the way that it happens. The two remaining survivors of the troop eventually come across a Cajun village. Up until now the Cajuns have been represented by the partially seen hunters. Now we see the Cajun everyday life of the village and the hospitality afforded to the troopers. Nevertheless the troopers are wary discovering that the hunters have returned to the village to finish them off. So after a game of cat and mouse they fight and kill the hunters and hobble off down the road out of the village until they meet an army vehicle.

The peculiar thing for me about this ending is that the film seems to be saying that Cajuns are not all bloodthirsty killers by portraying the village life and the obvious enjoyment. It could also be saying that the Cajun everyday life is a warm and cuddly myth because when the fight for survival in the village begins everything carries on as if nothing is happening! No one seems to be perturbed about shots being fired and the troopers obviously sustaining knife wounds. What does that say about the local populace? Mixed messages I think and puzzling to me any way.

Nevertheless, in the final analysis it is a gripping action thriller with overtones of so much more and whilst not getting into the great film category Southern Comfort has much to commend it.

I had trouble coming up with examples in films although I am sure there are many splendid ones over the years. However, after a long period of reflection (too long), it dawned on me that we see montage in action every day. Think of adverts on TV. Think of film trailers. Time is precious in these media so traditional continuity editing cannot get the job done here. So what they use is a very fast and compact montage technique to get a message across or a set of values. The viewer’s brain is an active participant in this process.

In fact the development of montage in the area of advertising is very sophisticated. It uses the latest insights in psychology both individual and social and taps into various concerns that we have. It is actually very powerful and in many ways works at the sub conscious level. We can make sense of images quicker and better than text or audio so the old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words” is undeniably true. If certain pictures evoke a certain response in people then it follows that certain sequences of pictures can also evoke predictable responses in the viewer.

What is interesting in some film trailers nowadays, particularly thrillers, is that the montage of scenes is put together to deliberately wrong foot the viewer and keep them guessing. Some film trailers are actually better than the film they are promoting because the montage allows your brain to create its own imaginary film before you see it. Very clever stuff. A little bit worrying if you are worried about brain washing and mind control and that sort of thing.

But the real beauty of montage in films is that every viewer can potentially have a slightly different understanding of the film. It engages the viewer’s brain and from an artist’s point of view that must be a good thing. In genre, say a western, you know what the rules are and when they are being broken. In montage there are no hard and fast rules; it is inherently more creative. As a film maker you have to experiment with images and sequences until you hit upon the right combination to evoke the response or feeling that you are looking for. Not only that but the great film makers can come up with new ways of getting their message across merely by using a unique series of images in a unique sequence. By the same token viewers can be confused by poorly structured montage sequences.

Maybe that is why there are so many film directors currently working who cut their teeth on adverts and commercials. We have seen many thirty second films in the advert break between the real films. Just watch them and maybe analyse them. They tell a story and they have a message. And the images are laden with meaning and action. And the sequence will have a beginning, a middle and an end. And they can be wildly creative. Maybe this is the real home of montage although it still does have a place in films.

I watched The New World the other night on TV and found it spookily like his previous film The Thin Red Line in many ways. Stylistically, there are many similarities. The mobile camera work, the beautiful photography of the natural world, the long takes, the sometimes-fractured continuity, the occasional character voice over of innermost thoughts, the sun-and-sky-through-the trees visual motif that almost acts as punctuation for the film’s narrative.

I found the film quite engaging albeit very long. The narrative is told through the probably mythical love affair between Captain John Smith and Pocahontas and is more like an epic poem than a narrative-driven piece. Smith is portrayed by Colin Farrell as an non-conformist outcast who escapes death at the hangman’s noose and the native tomahawk and who becomes more at ease with the native way of life than the European settlers’ grim existence at Jamestown. Pocahontas, played by newcomer Q’orianka Kilcher is the young and enchanting native princess who falls in love with him. Both experience major changes and dilemmas that bring them together and then force them apart. The film’s actions revolve around their central relationship for the most part until Smith is called back by the king to explore for a North West passage.

While the film is woven around the facts about the precarious co-existence of the settlers and the natives there are big themes being explored here. Is the industrial European culture any better than the indigenous aboriginal culture? Clearly, Malick doesn’t think so as he portrays the settlers as unwanted intruders into a kind of Garden of Eden. The beautiful shots of the natives fishing and in their daily lives, seemingly at one with the natural world, contrast vividly with the settlers grim, muddy and argumentative existence inside walls of their own making in the early part of the film. But whose world will prevail? The natives help the intruders survive their first harsh winter through gifts of food thinking that they will leave within the year. When it is clear they are staying the natives adopt a different stance and attitude and bloody battles erupt. The natives fear they will be overrun by the newcomers. It is a statement about imperialism and colonisation.

The love affair between Smith and Pocahontas is shown in long tracking shots of them walking through meadows and playfully getting to know each other through touch and other senses. No unnecessary sexual scenes here. Just the hint, the mood, the nuances created by the length of time they are shown together. Later, as difficulties beset the relationship the distance between them widens and the colours drain. Beautiful mood creation.

As Pocahontas is ostracised by her people she is taken in by well meaning settlers who show her their ways. Eventually she travels to Europe and we see her start to appreciate the beauty and culture of England and understand it and be at peace with it. Malick shows us that the formal beauty of an English country garden can be just as ravishing as the wild forest, streams and meadows of the new world. This was Pocahontas’s new world. On her death at the end of the film Pocahontas is citizen of two worlds accepting the differences and seeing beauty in each.

In some ways, The New World is a search for beauty both visually, emotionally and intellectually and the triumph of beauty over mere squalid existence. The film flows gently and rhythmically like a stream (apart from the odd violent episode) and does not conform to a typical Hollywood format where all things are resolved in the ending, all loose ends tied up neatly and the audience go home satisfied. It leaves you thinking. It leaves you with a sense of the changing moods and perspectives of the time. It leaves you with some powerful visual images of outstanding beauty and wonderment. More a cinematic poem than an historical film. It is probably a film that will mature slowly and may even provide a better Director’s Cut than most.