The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : An elegiac voyage

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Apr 10, 2006

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

An elegiac voyage

The New World (English)

Director: Terence Malick

Cast: Colin Farrell, Q' Orianka Kilcher

Even if the story of Pocahontas - the Indian princess who saved the English settlers at Jamestown in Virginia in 1607 - is not part of our folklore, it does not come in the way of enjoying this thoroughly engrossing, glorious film. Terence Malick has made four movies in the past three decades and each film has been poetry on celluloid.

Malick's last film, The Thin Red Line, came out around the same time as Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan did. Where Ryan was all sound and fury, guts (literally) and glory, Thin Red Line was meditative treatise on the horrors of war.

There was poetry in the single blade of grass, in the brilliant green foliage of Guadalcanal, which made the casual carnage all the more shocking.

Here too as the three boats make their way to the shore of a land that looks like Eden, the natives that the English call the naturals look on the visitors with interest and awe. Malick has turned his cinematic eye away from the sad history that followed the settlers and chooses to focus on individuals.

There is Captain John Smith, the adventurer, played masterfully by Colin Farrell and Pocahontas, featuring an incredibly assured debut by the then 14-year-old Q' Orianka Kilcher.

She is by turns an inquisitive, mischievous child, a loving mother, a grieving lover and an obedient wife. Christian Bale is brilliant as the settler who falls in love with the grave Pocahontas.

There are two new worlds - America was new to the settlers and England that is new to Pocahontas. Malick is partial to the use of voice over and this helps this movie as we get into the heads of the principals. The film was cut from its original 160 minutes to 130 minutes much against Malick's wishes. Hopefully, one should be able to see the film in all its glory in the director's cut.

Chhibber

Mini Anthikad Chhibber

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