The New World: Descending Light, Transcending Boundaries
23 May
This entry was published on May 23, 2011 at 5:05 pm. It’s filed under 2000s Cinema, American film, Photoessays, Terrence Malick and tagged cinema, darkness, film, light, movies, Photoessays, Terrence Malick, The New World.
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Precious Bodily Fluids 
He makes some beautiful images, that’s for sure. These images all remind me of On the Silver Globe, as well. Similar stories, I’m left similarly awestruck by both, but I couldn’t help feeling even in the extended version of The New World like the shot lengths were submerging the sense of mood beneath the surface of ‘narrative drive’. This same thing happens in On the Silver Globe, but it’s very much the point, and so effectively disorienting. To me Malick’s compositions are most comparable to the films made in the ‘cinema of slow’, or whatever you want to call it, but his editing rhythm at times betrays the calm and contemplation that those filmmakers excel in, and scenes become oddly disoriented rather than evocative. Maybe I’m alone in that, I don’t know. Maybe if I watch the film on 50% speed it will be pure bliss. That’s an idea. Perhaps not a good one, but I’m never well stocked in those.
Comparing with the competition, this is his worst film. But what enthralled me more than the images of nature and the city are the close-ups of the three main characters and the uplifting music as we watch their lives change.