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.