The New World [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray] [3 Discs]

Director: Terrence Malick Terrence Malick

Overview

Terrence Malick, one of America's most respected and least prolific filmmakers, returns to the director's chair with this epic-scale historical drama. In 1607, British naval officer Captain Newport (Christopher Plummer) is leading the first expedition to the "New World," the continent whose presence was first speculated by Amerigo Vespucci a century before. One of the sailors accompanying Newport is Captain John Smith (Colin Farrell), who is valued for his skills as a fighter and a seaman, but also possesses a sharp temper and spends much of the voyage bound in chains because of disputes with his shipmates. When Newport and his men first set foot on the New World's soil, they have no idea what to expect, and are met by a handful of "naturals," as the British come to call the natives, who seem at once amused and puzzled by their visitors. Newport appoints Smith leader of a band ordered to explore the territory, and Powhatan (August Schellenberg), tribal leader of the natives, isn't sure what to make of the uninvited guests. When Powhatan decides the sailors are not going to leave of their own volition, he orders his warriors to attack them; several of the invaders are killed, but at the insistence of his daughter Pocahontas (Q'orianka Kilcher), the rest are spared, including Smith. Smith is one of the men left behind when Newport returns to England for supplies, and he soon becomes infatuated with the beautiful Pocahontas, and finds his edgy personality is soothed by the unspoiled beauty of this new land. At the same time, he is frequently at odds with the ugly and avaricious nature of his own people and their crude settlement. After Newport returns to the New World, Smith is sent home, and Pocahontas comes to believe that he is dead; when John Rolfe (Christian Bale), who has established a tobacco plantation, asks Powhatan for Pocohontas' hand in marriage, he grants the request, and takes her back to England with him. When Smith finally returns to his beloved new land, he discovers the woman he loves is gone, and the British settlers and the "naturals" are on the verge of war. Shot on location in Virginia, The New World also features David Thewlis, Jonathan Pryce, and John Savage.

Product Details

Release Date:	07/26/2016
UPC:	0715515182119
Original Release:	2005
Rating:	PG-13
Source:	Criterion Collection
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround]
Language:	English
Time:	2:52:00
Sales rank:	8,524

Special Features

New 4K digital restoration of the 172-minute extended cut of the film, supervised by cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezik and director Terrence Malick and featuring material not released in theaters, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack; High-definition digital transfers of the 135-minute theatrical cut and the 150-minute first cut of the film, supervised by Lubezki, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks; New interviews with actors Colin Farrel and Q'orianka Kilcher; New program about the making of the film, featuring interviews with producer Sarah Green, production designer Jack Fisk, and costume designer Jacqueline West; Making "The New World," a documentary shot during the production of the film in 2004, directed and edited by Austin Jack Lynch; New programs about the process of cutting The New World and its various versions, featuring interviews with editors Hank Corwin, Saar Klein, and Mark Yoshikawa; Trailers

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Colin Farrell	John Smith
Q'Orianka Kilcher	Pocahontas
Christopher Plummer	Captain Christopher Newport
Christian Bale	John Rolfe
August Schellenberg	Powhatan
Wes Studi	Opechancanough
David Thewlis	Wingfield
Yorick Van Wageningen	Captain Argall
Ben Mendelsohn	Ben
Raoul Trujillo	Tomocomo,Actor
Irene Bedard	Pocahontas's Mother
John Savage	Savage
Jamie Harris	Emery
Alex Rice	Patowomeck's Wife
Michael Greyeyes	Rupwew
Kalani Queypo	Parahunt
Noah Taylor	Selway
Ben Chaplin	Jehu Robinson
Janine Duvitski	Mary
Eddie Marsan	Edward
Joe Inscoe	Ackley
Jake Curran	James
Thomas Clair	Patawomeck
Ford Flannagan	Winthrop
Bev Appleton	Small
Billy Merasty	Kiskiak
Jonathan Pryce	King James I
Alexandra W.B. Malick	Queen Anne
Roger Rees	Virginia Company Representative
Brían F. O'Byrne	Lewes
Alexandra Malick	Queen Anne
James Horner	Composer

Technical Credits

Terrence Malick

Terrence Malick	Director,Screenwriter
Sarah Green	Producer
Ivan Bess	Producer
Toby Emmerich	Producer,Executive Producer
Trish Hofmann	Producer,Executive Producer
Peter La Terriere	Producer
Bill Mechanic	Producer,Executive Producer
Rolf Mittweg	Producer,Executive Producer
Mark Ordesky	Producer,Executive Producer
Sandhya Shardanand	Producer
Billy Weber	Producer
Raymond Gieringer	Special Effects
Erik Aadahl	Sound Effects
Eric Bautista	Sound Effects
Craig Berkey	Sound Effects,Sound/Sound Designer
Marko A. Costanzo	Sound Effects
Francine Maisler	Casting
Kathleen Driscoll-Mohler	Casting
Rene Haynes	Casting
Jose Garcia	Sound/Sound Designer
Jack Fisk	Producer

Editorial Reviews

Writer-director Terrence Malick has made only four feature films in a 30-plus-year career -- The New World arrived eight years after his previous film, The Thin Red Line -- each unique and noteworthy. As anyone who's seen his extraordinary 1978 film, Days of Heaven, knows, Malick is a painterly crafter of images. In this respect he is, perhaps, the most sensual American filmmaker working today, and The New World represents him in peak form. Rather than focus on the 17th-century Pocahontas legend -- in which the Native American princess saves colonist John Smith from death at the hands of her father and fellow tribesmen -- Malick recounts the (generally) true story of the young girl's subsequent marriage to an English gentleman, her education, and her journey to Britain. An unusually restrained and dignified Colin Farrell plays Smith, who loves Pocahontas (although she is never referred to as such) but leaves her heartbroken to find his destiny elsewhere. Christian Bale is John Rolfe, a gentleman entranced by the native girl. Most captivating of all is the 15-year-old Q'Orianka Kilcher, an exotic beauty who turns in one of the most astonishing performances ever seen from a film newcomer. She seems practically ethereal, a word that would also apply to the director's visuals; Malick's colorful vistas of the lush, verdant, and still pristine North American countryside are as much a part of the story as Pocahontas herself. The New World unfolds at a slow, stately pace, paying little heed to the demands of typical Hollywood product. This meditative approach allows the story's emotional power, and the setting's grandeur, to accumulate with the passage of time and lend the film a truly epic quality.

Barnes & Noble - Ed Hulse

Terrence Malick aims for a kind of psychological realism through poetics in this stupendous reexamination of the Pocahontas myth. From the opening, when a group of frolicking Powhatan natives spy the approaching ships of Captain Newport (Christopher Plummer) from the future Virginia's verdant shores, it's clear that Malick is less interested in historical accuracy than in a ground-level positing of how colonization was emotionally experienced when Jacobean England discovered a "new world." As in most tellings of the story, Pocahontas (Q'orianka Kilcher) and Captain John Smith (Colin Farrell), through their romance, function as agents promoting change and peaceful integration of their respective cultures. But their good intentions are easily complicated; the probing voice-overs reveal them struggling to understand and never coming to terms with their desires. (A real-life romance most likely did not occur.) Emmanuel Lubezki's cinematography employs the usual painterly imagery and break-away nature shots of Malick's other films, but in this film these techniques are perhaps best integrated into thematic structure, referencing the idea of "virgin land" and the role physical environment plays in cultural identity. The actors are universally strong, particularly Christian Bale's final-act appearance as the pious John Rolfe. Kilcher, 14 at the time of shooting, gives a mind-bogglingly complex revelatory performance that nearly overwhelms at the unexpected rush of the closing moments. In Malick's notoriously miniscule oeuvre, The New World easily stands as one of his best films.

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