the new world
11 Feb 2006We went to see The New World today, and I really liked it. I am a big fan of The Thin Red Line, and so it only took Sean saying he loved it for me to want to go see it.
The movie is great, the scenery is great – generally everything is great. Except James Horner’s score. Not so great.
“Please kill me.” That’s what I was thinking around the time of the 394th repeat bar of his fucking super-irritating never-ending monotonous orchestral swell. The 10% that didn’t make me want to jam a Bic pen into my ears was quite nice, but it was completely ripped off of something else – either his older stuff from Braveheart or maybe some Dvorak piece I can’t put my finger on. Not only was it terrible, but it was about twice as loud in the mix as it needed to be.
Worst music ever. It was seriously distracting me from enjoying what was otherwise a very beautiful film – and I mean that. Malick’s trademark splicing of exposition with Serene Nature Footage (tm) is quite nice. Colin Farrell does a good job, and so does Q’Orianka Kilcher and Christian Bale, although his role was a bit static. Come to think of it, John Smith’s character was a bit flat, too – I don’t think Malick did a very good job of explaining why he was so melancholy and angsty, but it didn’t detract too much from the story as a whole.
One thing I loved about the film was just that non-explanation thing. I loathe films that are heavy on exposition and try to spell out both the characters’ past lives as well as the future significance of their actions to the audience. We didn’t get anything about why Smith was held a prisoner in the ship at the beginning – turns out he kept them going to “the new world” when everyone else wanted to turn back, and his headstrong attitude didn’t sit well with the ship captains, who were of different breeding than the lowly Mr. Smith.
I also loved that Malick showed the burgeoning relationship between the English and the “naturals” for what it was – confusing and unknown. There was no hint of the genocide to come because the English settlers were really not in that business (at least not yet, the Spanish and Dutch were doing a nasty job of that in different parts of the two continents). Malick wanted to show both “new worlds” (the Americas for Smith, and Europe for Pocahontas) and fixate upon that sense of wonder and confusion. I thought that was really great.
Other than Horner’s score – which I agree, was really annoying – I thought The New World was one of the best films I’ve seen this decade.