Throughout the history of art and media, artists have done their part to attempt to convey certain emotional traits and conventions. One of the newest forms of art being the silver screen. It becomes apparent that directors and filmmakers have done their part to retain the idea of physical and emotional connection in art. From the original The Kiss (1896)from director William Heise and the Edison film catalog. To the modern conversation with directors like Wong Kar-Wai and Richard Linklater along with writers like Charlie Kaufman taking modern approaches to the romantic and emotional narrative. But in question today is a take on a historical story that is not only criticizing the identity of power structures but also trying to show how emotional connection is used to usurp the ideals that said structures represent. The film in question being Terrence Malick’s period piece The New World. In this paper, I plan to discuss the way that connection succeeds or fails to subvert power structures through the narrative of the story.
In 2005 methodical and master director Terrence Malick released a film depicting the famous historical account of English sailors landing in 17thcentury Virginia. But mainly the story of a young native girl named Pocahontas and her connection to the Englishman John Smith. This is the same story that Disney attempted to adapt into a children’s film in 1995 with the animated film Pocahontas. The issue with how the animated version portrays the story is the lack of focus on the real-life consequences of the historical tale and doesn’t include the stories of disenfranchisement and violence that occurred in the real-life accounts. The New Worldfollows a more historically accurate narrative and shows how characters seek to obtain a connection through conflict founding between their overarching powers. The film stars Colin Farrell as Captain John Smith, who is presented as the main protagonist at the beginning of the films narrative. He is the main focal point for connection in the film’s first act.
John Smiths story starts with him being rejected from his fellow Englishman. He is shackled in the brig of the ship for speaking his mind against the crew, calling for a mutiny. Already fed up with his superiors he arrives ready to be hanged and to have his story end before it is able to truly begin. However, instead of a quick death he ends up receiving marching orders from Captain Newport, played by Christopher Plummer. John Smith receives a pardon from his superiors but is sent with others to seek out the “Naturals” as the Native American population is referred too as in the film. This event leads to John Smith being captured and imprisoned yet again, by the natives. The idea of connection between characters in this film arises when Pocahontas spares John Smith’s life as her father is nearly about to sentence him to death. What arises from this is Smith being forced to live amongst the indigenous peoples as his sentence. This is the point in the film where we see Malick’s style of neorealism come into play. The direction allows the audience to feel a sense of connection, by the way, he as a director is able to play with nature as a character. Himself and his cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki are masters are making simple B-roll footage so immersive that shots bleed into the narrative of the story. We see this in his previous entries to his filmography, such as his war epic The Thin Red Line (1998) and Days of Heaven (1978)where we see how he can shoot nature as a driving force for characters to deal with and allow the audience to follow along in that narrative. Writers David Bordwell and Kristen Thompson include this in their book on the history of film, as they describe the films of Terrence Malick by referring to them as “A series of introspective, lyrical films about psychological crises among the professional class”[1]. They follow that up by referring to neorealism as one of his motivations. This is abundantly clear during the sequences of John Smith being accepted by the native people. We see the transformation of Smith’s character. Going from someone who was disenfranchised by his own people for not believing in the cause set forth from the people he thought of as brothers. Smith grows by noticing the beauty of nature and the simplistic way the people he is surrounded by in this village live compared to his own way of living with his band of Englishman. He finds the most of this comfort in spending time with the Native Chief’s youngest daughter, Pocahontas. They develop a connection through their ability to form a bond with each other as people aside from their respective power structures. Smith feels as if he, despite being pardoned in the early part of the film is not a free man. He is attempting to discover that freedom through the power of connection, and Malick does a perfect job at demonstrating that while having them lay in picturesque long grassy fields and walking amongst the trees. Smith as a character is built around is disaffection with his own people, and the lengths he goes to discover a connection with a different population.
The character of Pocahontas in this film is portrayed by a young actress named Q’orianka Kilcher in her first major Hollywood role. This casting choice was made by Malick and his team as a way to bridge her story with the narrative of neorealism that Malick enjoys exploring. Writer Cesare Zavattini explores this notion with his writing on neorealism. He talks about the “elimination of the technical professional” and how “neorealism breaks all the rules”[2]. He refers to the practice of building a realistic world around the sense of making a world seem the rawest and taking out the professionalism from the production can make a film appear more realistic. Take director Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 masterpiece Bicycle Thieves for example. It is able to be such a convincing narrative due to the performances by the amateur and unknown actors. Allowing for a stronger connection to the material from the audience. This is what Malick intends from this casting choice. He intends for us as the viewer to initially connect with the character of John Smith, but in actuality creates a main focus on Pocahontas. Her characters arc begins as simple curiosity to the world outside her own. Seeking a connection to an unknown idea she was not entirely aware of and John Smith is the harbinger of this feeling. As a result of their connection, she is laid responsible for allowing the American settlers to receive crops from the native people and in turn Pocahontas is excommunicated from her people and sent to the American colony. Pocahontas’s only known life was with her people in her tribe, and due to her idea of discovering a sense of belonging to a greater force it leads to her capture and disenfranchisement from her people. A detail that Malik includes in this film is that we never hear Pocahontas’s name spoken. It’s a detail that works incredibly well, especially the scene in which they nearly mention it until it is revealed that she wishes to change her name. She is then given the name Rebecca. This action is her admitting to herself that she is no longer apart of her original tribe. Since her exile, she has so bearing to stay emotionally apart of a power structure that disenfranchised her and forced her away.
John Smith returns to England. He tells members of the colony to mislead Pocahontas by informing her of his death. With her emotional courage at an all-time low, being forced into a new colony and a no sense of connection or belonging. She finds comfort and connection through a successful farmer who arrives at the colony named John Rolfe played by Christian Bale. Rebecca’s disaffection with her people abandoning her has affected her deeply. Her character arc is clear. She is extremely naïve and is unsure of how to comprehend the scale of the world she wanted to understand but now is unable to find happiness and a true connection with her new life. John Rolfe is a mechanism to be seen as a newfound idea behind her view of the colony. She sees a person who has the ability to lead her away from a life of faceless servitude in the colony. Connection is there between herself and Rolfe. The connection that lacks is that between herself and the two power structures that are tearing at her personally. The knowledge that she had been removed from her home and forced into a new identity made clear from her name change. As well as the ever-present bleakness of a future in a world she doesn’t understand.
Another potent message that shows her abandoning her former power structure is her being baptized. This is the films way of addressing her abandonment of nature as her spiritual guide. Her choice to stay with John Rolfe shows that she is willing to abandon her upbringing of what she learned as a young girl living amongst her people and giving herself to the ideology of the English. Essayist and author James Morrison mentions her arc in a writing piece. He talks about Pocahontas’s place in nature. How “she moves joyfully though natural landscapes in an unspoiled wilderness” at the beginning of the film. But by the end is chasing her and Rolfe’s son through a garden that is “severely groomed and filled with pruned trees, cropped hedges, topiary and sculpted simulations of natural rock”[3]. This is a major tonal change from her relationship with nature before. This shows the progression of her character as she abandons her previous life and accepts her fate that came from seeking connection from Rolfe. This dissection of the Pocahontas character are ways to see how The New World is attempting to convey this sense of connection between its characters and how the power structures that come between them affect the narrative of the story. In Pocahontas’s case, it leads her through her curiosity of a greater world outside of the confines of her naturalistic life amongst the native population and took her to a completely alternate idea of what life could be.
While the inter-character romantic connection develops during this film, there are also the connections that fail between the overarching communities that bind both Smith and Pocahontas. Those being the settlers and the indigenous people. The native people are shown as nomads who live off the land, we see this in how they interact with Smith during his time spent with them. They find their connection through spirituality and their ability to be one with the nature around them and the colonists that arrive in Virginia are preventing that connection to occur due to the threat they pose to the native way of life. The natives are attempting to connect with Smith in their pursuit to understand the purpose of these new men and women in their land. They don’t see what they are doing as wrong or right, they simply are existing around the nature that preserves them.
When the English settlers arrive, they disturb this way of living. The settlers only purpose on the island is to extend the reach of the English Crown. They are attempting to colonize this new world and the native people pose a threat to this lifestyle they have brought over. The sense of connection that is being attempted by both of these power structures is impossible to work in the universe the film sets up based upon the real story of 17thcentury settlers. Both of these populations have entirely different ideologies and separate ideas of the scope of the world. The idea of connecting with the other is not the intention of either. The indigenous peoples are attempting to comprehend the other, while the settlers simply see the “Naturals” as a roadblock in their way of completing the mission set forth by the monarchy. Both John Smith and Pocahontas are the focus of this narrative due to both of their curiosity and disaffection with each of their powerful groups and from this inability to create a functional discourse between them it leads to the ultimate, climactic skirmish between the two entities. In Smiths case, he never felt truly accepted by his people and believed his connection to Pocahontas was his only true purpose in the end. The final meeting between the two of them in England is a truly impressive feat of storytelling by Malick. Smith reveals that his continuation of the exploration of other worlds did not bring him the connection he desired and how he felt as if he had sailed past it, referring to the connection that was lost between himself and Pocahontas.
The world that Terrence Malick presents the viewer by the end of the film is an example of how to convey a sense of connection in modern cinema. However, the way the Malick is able to show the emotional struggle that the characters are dealing with adds another layer to how we view nature, community and emotional bond. It paints a picture in the way that only film can and separates the art form from others who attempt to tell a similar story. In conclusion, connection is a feeling that we attempt to understand through our art and look back at history to attempt to explain. Or in a way, we simply follow in other people’s ideas of connection are until we become content with a way of living.
[1]Bordwell, David. Thompson, Kristen. Film History: An Introduction Fourth Edition.University of Wisconsin-Madison. McGraw Hill Education. 2019. Pg, 360.
[2]Zavattini, Cesare. “Some ideas on Cinema” Sight and Sound 23:2 (October-December 1953), pg. 58.
[3]Morrison, James. “Making Worlds, Making Pictures: Terrence Malick’s The New World”. The Cinema of Terrence Malick. Ed. Patterson, Hannah. Wallflower Press, New York + London. 2007. Pg. 203.
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