Again.
Actually, this is the new version (hence 2006). The shorter cut is more conventional (even banal) in the first half, and Farrell seems far more sleazy. Both of these alterations make the film’s first half less beatific and more discomforting — appropriately pointing up the dubious nature of Smith’s account, rather than seeming to sanction it (as most reviewers of the film seem to think). They also turn the second half into a richer, more affecting love story.
For all this, I think there’s still a better film to be cut, and hopefully this will be included on the DVD.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: New Line 35mm Print
24 Feb 2006 2:51 PM | Comments (4)
We only got the short version over here- and speaking as a longtime Malick fan, it was a crushing disappointment, it felt like your Chanel perfume commercial director’s all- time favourite movie, lots of glancing light and dreamy voiceover (‘who is this man…’ etc). So it encourages me to think that a longer version might improvie things.
Unfortunately, your disappointment may continue, as the American DVD’s release has just been announced with mention of only the current theatrical edit. (Mind you, they may still offer a subsequent “special edition” to rope in the double-dippers.)
But even if you’d seen a longer version, I’m not sure you’d have been less disappointed, or that your reaction would have been substantially different. The film is what it is, and while each cut may make certain things clearer or muddier, the film’s tone (which seems to be what you and many others have the most problem with) will likely continue to puzzle regardless of the film’s length.
But ultimately — and surely I’m repeating myself here — I don’t see a great distinction between the tone of The New World and that of The Thin Red Line (especially it’s opening sequences of supposed primitive South Pacific bliss), and so (as with the earlier film), I’m largely agnostic about the need for alternate versions.
I’m actually surprised at the generally positive reception this film is getting… The Thin Red Line seemed to have so much more- sure, the voiceovers strayed pretty close to the cringe line on a couple of occasions, but the film had a level of cinematic sophistication, tension building and character depth that it worked. This time, the characters seemed vague, ephemeral, the voiceovers stood out as our only grasp on their personalities, and there was just nothing there, flimsy near- Hallmark level platitudes. And I found it intensely frustrating, because the film was so beautiful, the emotion in the story so ultimately pure, it was frustrating (for me) to see it so awkwardly conveyed.
Comparing the characters here to those in The Thin Red Line, I actually find these slightly more rich. Many of those in the prior film could easily be identified as war film clichés, and while I think Malick employs a very deft shorthand in forming these characters and eliciting sympathy for them, they seem to largely service the wider themes of the film (not that that’s at all a bad thing).
The New World, by contrast, rests much more on the characters — indeed, even the ways the characters construct themselves and each other: Smith’s (seemingly futile) efforts to recreate himself as a hero and a good man (and his use of Pocahontas and their “romance” to effect this end); Pocahontas’s loss and regaining (or receiving) of identity; Rolfe’s recreation of Pocahontas “from scratch” and his eventual acceptance of her agency. To be sure, these characters and their interactions also serve the wider themes of the film (romantic entanglement as analogy for interculturality), but I find these characters more interesting as individuals. But perhaps that’s only because there are fewer of them.
Tom
28 February 2006
1:26 AM
Website