Virginia Is For Lovers II

Dan Stevens has written about The New World at Slate. She, like a number of critics, sings Malick's praises for creating a "primarily sensory" film. And, yeah, it's true. Those parts that are primarily sensory (or sensual) are the film's best. But why, then, does she insist that the portion of the film that least lives up to this potential, the John Smith half, is better than the John Rolfe half, in which the narrative skitters off and becomes nothing but a spare skeleton on which to hang Malick's beautiful images?

Some of the scenes of love between Pochontas and John Smith are quite fantastic, but they are also much too romanticized and there is, after all, that pounding, irritating, obnoxious score, which Stevens helpfully points out is not Horner, but Mozart (of course, Mozart! I should have guessed when my brain started to hemorrhage!) Unfortunately, the bulk of the first half is taken up by the more overtly political aspects of the story. The building and protection of Jamestown, the difficulty of "diplomacy" with the "naturals" (still: praise Malick for showing that the Indians did not bring food simply out of the kindness of their hearts and showing that treaties had to be made in order to be broken), the mutinies within the fort and on and on. All of that is stupid and unnecessary. The attempt to explain the history of Jamestown falls flat, at least in part because the story revolves around Pochontas, who was, in fact, only twelve in 1607, but also because Malick's best impulses are toward something more evasive and elemental than all that Christopher Plummer shit.

And then she goes so far as to praise the weird voice overs! I'll agree that a lot of these, paritcularly toward the end (again, Smith's soliloquys on the purity of America and the nobility of its savages is fucking lame) have a hypnotic, lulling quality that I love. But, "they burrow deeper into questions that the cinematography and sound design are already asking," is totally incomprehensible.

I know a lot of people like this movie, and really I can't begrudge that. It's about a kajillion times the film Brokeback Mountain is, and it's nice to see a movie like this being made at all, even it's not that good. But I'm beginning to think I saw an entirely different film than anyone else. I mean, seriously, "a haunting Mozart piano concerto"? What the fuck?