Recent viewings

The New World (2005) . Pretty, pretty scenery. Pretty, pretty people. Pretty, pretty cinematography.

Deadly dull and deadly slow plot.

Q'Orianka Kilcher (cousin to singer Jewel Kilcher) is a lithe and attractive Pocahontas, with quick, graceful, leaping, dancing movements reminiscent of a wild doe. Colin Farrell, unfortunately, is comparatively lifeless as Captain John Smith. He seems to spend most of his time either silently moping or aimlessly wandering in slow motion through the wilderness, gazing about with a soulfully moronic look on his face.

Director Terence Malick is pretty clearly playing on the noble-savage motif here. Pocahontas's people all move like ballet dancers portraying idealized wild animals, while the English colonists other than the saintly naif John Smith alternate between brutal stupidity (grubbing for gold in muddy hillsides instead of building shelters or collecting food) and stupid brutality (killing and cannibalizing each other, attacking the Indians, etc.).

Realpolitik does turn out to play a role in the life of the Indians (or "naturals", as the colonists call them), as Powhatan and his advisors contemplate killing Smith and the rest of the colonists to keep them from seizing the land. As the famous legend relates, Pocahontas saves Smith's life and then, in the film, prompts her people to supply provisions to the stupidly starving English. Smith, after returning from his sojourn among the "naturals", unwittingly becomes part of a coup against the former leader of the colonists and must take on the role of a hard-counseling leader to chivvy the reluctant, lazy and badly organized English into surviving the winter. This is an improvement over wandering aimlessly through the woods, although there are intimations that it will lead to him treating Pocahontas badly.

Unfortunately, I can't report on the second half of the movie, because I fell asleep.