826 The New World

[dadaistnun]

Gary's review of the Blu.

[SalParadise]

Anyone know of a working link for the script of this film?

Thanks in advance.

[MyNameCriterionForum]

Anyone know of a working link for the script of this film?

Thanks in advance.

Don't have a link, but I did read a version online circa the film's release. What I read hewed fairly close to the film... but I have to wonder how many iterations the script had gone through, and whether this was more or less a transcript rather than a working script, considering Malick's reported working methods.

Also read a purported Q (pre-Tree of Life) script that was very interesting... but, again, wondering about its source -- it may have been a fake based on the years of rumors.

Tangent: I really hate those Kubrick "script" books for FMJ and EWS -- they definitely seem to be mere transcripts of the finished product instead of working scripts.

[markhax]

A new, substantial article by art historian Richard Neer on "The New World" has just appeared in a recently launched online journal, nonsite.org.

[hollyharry]

I saw this film again recently, and it really is I think one of the great films of all time. One aspect that seems to get overlooked is how great a coming of age story it really is. It's less a love story then a film about the idea of love, of grace and innocence that one has at one point in their lives, but is elusive in relation to civilization (whether the Native American civilization or the English civilization). Smith tries to find the feelings he had in the Eden of the forest by being evasive, by constantly moving to feel free. Pocahontas on the other hand deals with her problems, and doesn't run, and as a result finds that feeling again through the maternal love of her son. It's clear in the incredible climactic reunion scene, just by posture and how sentences are said, that he desperately still needs her, but she doesn't need him anymore. The performances in that scene alone are amongst the best I've ever seen (Farrell, in particular, is astonishing here). The extended cut too, really is a different, and better film.

[Reliakor]

I can't really account for how neglected this film was by critics and audiences. It seems to me much Malick's strongest film, a spellbinding experience the likes of which I've not seen in cinema before or since (excluding Blue Velvet and Mulholland Dr., which don't enact their wonders through a piling-on of cinematographic beauty in nature and extreme editing). I felt that it was shot as beautifully as any of Malick's films, but benefit enormously from his most skilled (to this date) control over narrative dramatization, the film only weakening slightly toward its end when Pocahontas is in England. By contrast, I found Days of Heaven's drama too underdeveloped and prematurely stopped, The Thin Red Line mired in a kind of misty and addled philosophizing, Badlands simple but excessively thin on content, and The Tree of Life an undisciplined hodgepodge of both commendable and censurable aspects of the rest of Malick's oeuvre. Am I alone in thinking this?

[greggster59]

Not alone in thinking The New World is a great film, no. Bit, I think all of his films are worthwhile, beautiful and important works of cinema in that they are all very rich in content and each viewing is a somewhat different experience for me.

[bdsweeney]

A new, substantial article by art historian Richard Neer on "The New World" has just appeared in a recently launched online journal, nonsite.org.

Thank you, both for the article link and for bringing to attention the site as a whole.

[Matt]

Am I alone in thinking this?

I am probably more appreciative of his other work than you appear to be, but I also think that The New World is far and away his best film. I don't agree that the film weakens when it locates to England. I find that part profoundly moving.

[rs98762001]

I don't agree that the film weakens when it locates to England. I find that part profoundly moving.

Yup it's the most affecting part of the movie for me too. And the final Vorspiel sequence isn't just the best filmmaking of Malick's career, but some of the most beautiful I've ever seen.

[Guido]

I'll join the chorus. It's always been my (private) contention that Malick somehow unlocked a cinematic mystery in those final minutes.

[Murdoch]

I'll join the chorus. It's always been my (private) contention that Malick somehow unlocked a cinematic mystery in those final minutes.

Indeed, while my enjoyment of Malick has steadily dwindled, there is little in cinema that captivates me more than the use of Wagner in those final four minutes.

[Oedipax]

I literally thought I was going to pass out the first time I saw the Vorspiel ending sequence in The New World. I also remember that final shot looking up at the trees and thinking "...and... cut" at the exact instant it went to black and being astounded.

[Matt]

I cry at that part every damn time, and I do not cry.

[cdnchris]

So it's not just me. My wife gives me a hard time because I never cry during a movie (I get "you're a robot" because I didn't cry at the end of The Green Mile) but that sequence in The New World gets me every time as well.

But she still thinks I'm a robot.

[domino harvey]

It feels like I've said this more than once on this board, but I've seen all of Malick's films and this seems to be the only one that properly marries his aesthetic approach with the narrative needs of his subject, and as a result it is far and away his best film.

[Aspect]

Wow, I always felt weird saying The New World was my favorite Malick film (and I love them all...Tree of Life less so, unfortunately). When people asked why, I could only answer by saying it was simply the film of his I felt most emotionally involved in. Days of Heaven did the love triangle thing very well, but The New World, whether because of James Horner's lovely score (assisted by Wagner and Mozart, of course) or more time devoted to the inner lives of the characters and their yearnings, hit me where it counted. The movie is, for me, a beautiful song that I can listen to and feel moved by at any time. I slip into a reverie whenever I watch it.

[Noiretirc]

Dear Lovers Of This Film: Is the extended 172min cut the version that I should see, or should I seek out the 150min? (More may not be better, etc etc.)

[Matt]

I haven't seen the 150-minute "pre-release cut," but the 135-minute "theatrical release cut" and the 172-minute "extended cut" are, to me, very different films. The theatrical cut is a bit more languid, the extended is cut more in the style of Tree of Life. I think you can't go wrong with whichever cut you decide to watch first, but you should probably watch all that you can get ahold of.

[domino harvey]

I've only seen the extended cut and I can't imagine what I'd want to lose from it

[Matt]

There are some notes on the differences here. It's not just as though some scenes are longer or there are new scenes in the extended cut, it's an almost completely different edit of the movie.

[Noiretirc]

Forgive my not being able to find this, but surely Malick approved this extended cut? What is the history/motivation behind him making this version 3 years after the initial release?

[Matt]

It's absolutely authentic and approved (though I can't seem to find definitive confirmation online). He was surely contractually obligated to deliver a theatrical cut no longer than 135 minutes (which is not uncommon). The surprise is that New Line apparently saw enough commercial potential in releasing a longer cut on DVD/BD and allowed him to do it.

[flyonthewall2983]

While reading through some of the tributes to James Horner, I heard some rumblings about his problems and when I googled it I found this, and specifically this following snatch from an interview with Horner describing his experience on the project

So he went out shooting the movie, went over time, and got beautiful images and everybody [said] "Oh god, this is so beautiful." There were a couple of things that were pasted together by a couple of the experienced editors of the love scenes: "Oh, this gonna be great, absolutely great". OK. He had eight editors working for him -- two prestigious, the rest out of the woodwork, and some assistants. There was so much film he was working on night on night, [that] there was a crew... When I first saw it, it was a mishmash of unrelated scenes, complete mishmash. I said, "Well Terry, you need to..." He asked me what I thought. "You need to cohere this. I mean this scene should be there" ... all kinds of editing things were wrong. It was the first assembly.

It was April and he was supposed to have a cut ready by May to look at, and that we missed. He missed his deadline and it was in the middle of June when we saw it. The studio saw it, and it was the same thing I saw two days after he finished shooting. It has gone through two and a half month's work and it was in just the same state. This was when I first saw it and red lights started to go up everywhere because I’m getting close to my recording dates and this is unscoreable like this.

I played him scenes, I played him everything on the piano and I had the feeling he did not really know what movie music was. He didn’t have any experience with real film music being presented to him. Even in 'Thin Red Line' it was all cut up. Here I was writing music for him, which he would say was "beautiful and great" and sounded "great" on the piano. Whatever. But I knew - and I warned everybody - this man does not have a clue what to do with movie music or how it works, not a clue. He is gonna to hear his first cue and not know what to do with it and I warned everybody.

I begged him to watch several movies that have music in them [used] very effectively. Be it 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,' I mean I showed him all kinds of films or asked him to see all kinds of films that had scores in them. He said he would, but he never did.

Slowly the editorial team started to disintegrate. The good editors left and they brought in more assistants and it was cut by a bunch of incompetents. There was no real editor. He continued on in that way asking for opinions and we were approaching recording and there were no scenes to record, there were no scenes to time. I had my music editors assemble sequences as I thought they should be or as they normally [would] be, and we scored some of that and it was lovely, just what everybody had hoped would be intended by the film.

Terry saw it and immediately took it back to his editing room and cut it apart and we were still recording and I realized that it was just a waste of everybody’s money to keep recording, though we were commited because we had hired the orchestra. So Terry was making this movie that was incomprehensible.

Everybody told him it was unwatchable. Everybody! Everybody! And he had Final Cut, and when a director has final cut, everbody can scream and shout, but unless you’re willing to really go head-to-head in combat, you basically have to throw up your hands and say, "I have no control over this man." The editor who had worked on "The Thin Red Line" begged Terry to fix the fim. It was a love story, and Terry doesn’t feel those feelings. All I can say is that Terry is on the surface a stone and he does not know how to tell love stories to save his life. When we scored the movie he completely disassembled everything. The score made no sense anymore and he started to stick in Wagner over scenes, and a Mozart piano concerto over an Indian attack. Everybody thought he was insane. By this time I was no longer on, I basically said, 'futz you. So I just did say a four letter word. I’m out of here. I’ve done my score.'

I never felt so letdown by a filmmaker in my life....It was the most disappointing experience I’ve ever had with a man because not only did he throw out my score, he loved my score, he didn’t have a clue what to do with it. He didn’t have a clue how to use music. So what he started to do was, as I said, to take classical pieces, but not even pieces that would be transparent and lovely, he was taking Wagner like a thick blanket and putting it in his movie. I swear to god, on the dubbing stage everybody thought he was joking and he would bring up these musical solutions and take out the score and put in Wagner, or take out the score and put in Mozart.

It’s not like he fired me and I’m bitter. What happened was I’m bitter because he did not make the movie he promised everybody he would make. Everybody felt betrayed, from the film company down to the editors. Everybody felt betrayed, and this was the man who took the story that could have been one of the great love stories and was one of the great love stories in history, and turned it into crap, and it’s because he doesn’t believe in those things. He doesn’t understand them. And most importantly, he has not an emotion in his body. He’s emotionless.

[hearthesilence]

WOW. I'd have to watch the film again to comment on the score as a whole, but the use of Wagner over the arrival of the Europeans was brilliant and that scene was masterfully put together. The score over Pocahontas' first exposure to Europe was also great, so at least in those instances, Malick made the right call over everyone else's alleged bewilderment.