The New World (or, How to steal an best actress nomination from a South American Indian for her amazing role playing a North American Indian)

I sometimes wonder how Terence Malick makes a film. At times I imagine that he is sitting in some poetry cafe in New York, he has an idea and he puts his hands up and silences the already almost silent audience, and says, "I am going to make a film." Then the word whispers its way around New York and across the continent and droves of reputable actors flock to him and from the window of the poetry cafe he carefully picks them out for the roles. Then he packs them all into a plane, gives them a story and tells them to go frolic in the wilderness for a few months while he runs around weaving in between with his eye plastered to the viewfinder of a camera. Then he cuts it all together, gently lays a layer of strings over the top and gets the actors back to the poetry cafe to contemplate their voice over onto the images. Voila!

Don't mess with it. It's my imagination!

Of course, then the nasty, evil, capricious studio executives take the hallowed reels and shorten them down to a shred of what they were and release them into the dirty, reeking cinemas so we can gawk at the pretty lights with our unworthy eyes. Okay, now I am just being silly.

In all seriousness, The New World is sublime. While it has more plot in it than most reviewers would have you believe, there is still a huge tonal element to the film that is more important than the actual goings on. The news on the net is that the cinema cut has been cut down to two hours down from over three and surprisingly, it really shows, especially in the first act of the film. If the take off is a little jarring, it is all forgotten at cruising altitude and the best thing about the trip is it never lands. Everything just soars. Colin Farrell is suitably beautifully tortured, with and without his shirt, Christian Bale reprises his role from Little Women to great effect (with his shirt on) and Wes Studi, Christopher Plummer and David Thewlis all act their pants off (figuratively). A pianoless Noah Taylor even pops up (Go Australia!).

But this film, squarely belongs to Q'Orianka Kilcher who plays the no name *cough* Pocahontas *cough* princess. She is utterly sublime. She makes everything believable, joy, sorrow, pain, love. And she is only fifteen years old. She manages to imbue the film with such pure emotion that everything lifts.

Ahh, my heart flutters just to think. Go to the movie's official site to share the love!