The New World
Why are you saving me? I look like I smell bad.
Watched the movie “The New World” over the past two days. I totally see why it tanked in theaters.
It has all the ingredients of a win— Colin Farrell, Christian Bale, history, drama, sexual tension, beautiful scenery, starvation. You know, the basics. But even with these building blocks of excellence, this somehow manages to be one of the most disjointed movies that I’ve ever seen. I kept watching, hoping for it to speed up, clear up, something. But no. Where you wanted some exposition, all you got was another low-angle shot of wind through trees. Also – why was everyone such a mumbler? We’ve already got Colin Farrel fighting his accent, and Christian Bale fighting his teeth – do we need them to mumble through, too?
There was pretty much no character development, leaving you to apply your own explanations for the actions of the main players, who all seemed to be dramatic and torn for no fathomable reason. Things happened for no reason, in no order, with no explanation, leading to lots of questions on my part.
Was that one guy her brother, or what? What the frack was happening in that hut? Was that a dream or a hallucination? Why did they save him, then decide to kill him? Where did his armor go between when they shoved him in the hut and when he appeared before the chief?
I don't want you to notice my incongruously clean white teeth, so I will cover them with my hand, so coyly.
Why did these two fall in love? Were they bumping uglies out in the woods? Why so ambiguous, director-man? Why didn’t he just marry her then? No one seemed to care. I didn’t see her helping the colonists, when did that happen? Why didn’t he take her back to England when he went, then? Why the heck would he have her told he was dead? Why did she think she was married to him? They didn’t show them getting married – was that what was happening out in the woods when we cut away to wind in the trees for the 1674th time?
This movie needed some serious subtitles, and it also needed whatever that’s called when they flash some pertinent information up on the screen in between scenes. (While we were showing you yet another 45-second shot of a wind-blown field of grain, most of the colonists died, Pocahontas gave Smith a stellar BJ and all the fish died of fish cholera. That’s why we have all these starving, unintelligible orphans milling about. Now back to the action.)
The actress who played Pocahontas (Q’orianka Kilcher) was as effective as she could be, considering the weird, rambling dialog she had to work with. Her primary function seemed to be looking perpetually hard done by, and her lips made her look as if someone had just smacked her in the mouth a minute ago, off-camera, so I guess that helped her to achieve the director’s goal – whatever that was.
Anyway, this movie aggravated me enough that I wanted to write it down, because this could have been an interesting story, but literally lost the plot and ended up sucking as a history, a love story, and even a cautionary tale.
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Don’t worry – you can buy the 3 1/2 hour long “directors cut” next year some time and then find that his original vision of the story wasn’t that great either.
Runtime:
135 min | USA:150 min (extended version) | USA:172 min (2008 Extended DVD Cut)