Emmanuel Lubezki

(In French, On TV, April 2019) I’m constantly amazed at how, over the past years, I’m grown to appreciate and maybe even like the work of filmmakers I used to despise or at least dismiss. So it is with Terence Malick, who seems to be parodying himself half the time. The New World looks and feels a lot like The Thin Red Line or The Tree of Life with a simple story intercut with ponderous voiceovers and moody editing. It’s a style that can be deployed to ridiculous effect (when you’re not taken by it) or can feel profound (when you are). The New World is basically a loose retelling of the Pocahontas legend, what with a white European explorer marrying a Native princess and subsequent complications. The story is familiar and not overly complicated, but what could have fit neatly in 90 minutes here takes nearly three hours given the voiceover, meditative pace and half-sequitur editing. It would have been maddening in theatres, but I found that as part-background viewing at home, it’s almost pleasant. There are, mind you, plenty of reasons to look at the screen: Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography is often terrific, the recreation of early European settlements is gritty enough, and Q’orianka Kilcher fits the casting requirement of a princess. The sentimentalism of the picture is variable, most reliably heartfelt in tackling the romantic drama of its leads, but not quite ready to sustain the “noble savage” clichés when they’re shown as equally ruthless in assaults on colonists. While I won’t count myself as a fan of The New World, I’m at least satisfied by it, even occasionally impressed by what it manages to show in between the endless monologues and slack pacing.