Lewes Film Club - The New World (12A)

Terrence Malick has made four films in 32 years, and when you watch them you realise that maybe this is the best way of going about things. ‘The New World’ eschews many of the devices that have become the norm in modern movie making, opting for a more poetic, artistic, leisurely approach. You can tell it’s going to be a slow-burner from the opening credits, but it never fails to be anything but captivating.

The story starts with the arrival of three British sailing ships on the Virginian coast in 1607. This is the vanguard of the British settlement of the New World. They are met by curious ‘naturals’ who are fascinated by the new arrivals. They poke at their strange clothing, feel their hair, touch their skin. They do not attack them, instead allowing them to build a fort, the first European settlement in the New World since the times of Eric the Red, which the settlers name Jamestown after the British King. Things quickly start to go wrong for the new arrivals, whose crops don’t take, and who start killing the locals. Their commander sails their ships back to Europe to get more supplies (‘I’ll be back in the Spring’ he says). He leaves Captain John Smith (Colin Farrell) to lead an expedition upriver to find food. Smith loses his men, and gets captured by the local Powhatan tribe: they want to kill him, but the chieftain’s teenage daughter Pocahontas persuades her father to spare him. Smith is allowed to stay in the camp for some months, to teach Pocahontas (played sublimely by the 14-year-old Q'Orianka Kilcher) how to speak English, so to facilitate trade with the newcomers. There he learns to appreciate the way of life of the natives: how it blends perfectly with the nature around it;