mr & smith

the new world isn’t terrence malick’s only film about romance gone wrong in a stunning natural setting, but it is by far his least rigorous. while rrr managed an iota of interest in the counterpoint between the almost hysterical pace of the movies parade of signs the “art cinema” and the pseudo-tarkovskian slowness of its narrative, we find it hard to believe that any thought, much less 30 million dollars went into its production.
rejecting the cheesey period-piece cgi of, for example, the patriot (2000), the film gives us landscapes in slow camera movements, subjective voice-overs tending towards asynchronious sound, the mise-en-scene of famous paintings and the “haptic” fall of light. all presented free of the relentless inventiveness in kubrick’s barry lyndon(1975).
unlike that film, the new world avoids strangeness or even “defamiliarization.” the “lush beauty” of emmanuel lubezki’s cinematography (see also lemony sincket’s… (2004) and ali (2001)) and craig berkey’s sound design (see also charlie’s angels: full throttle (2003)and x2(2003)) make us feel nothing but the deadening weight of bourgeois cinema’s lingua fanca; no doubt because these gentlemen are industry hacks, the cinematic equivalent of studio side men in a keith richard’s solo project. the decision to leve collin farrell’s decidedly non-17th century tattoo’s visible feels like a stale leftover from chantal akerman’s portrait d'une jeune fille de la fin des années 60 à bruxelles(1994). (it doesn’t it seem to connect to anything else in the film, unless we count the cheesily anachronistic use of wagner’s rhine theme.) as our colleague ofer eliaz pointed the politically disgusting return to “nature” as tragedy’s soothing ending lacks any originality since it repeats the ending of badlands(1993) (the film that appealed to rrr’s reprehensible auteurist hopes.) however, some of us (jrc) point out that the ending, and it’s cliché feel work to undermine the romantic notion of a new world by making it clear that the old same stories will repeat themselves in america , forever and ever, amen. the films very stupidity becomes a critique of colonization.
the new world display’s costumes (designed by jacqueline “the banger sisters(2002)" west as relentlessly as mr and mrs smith, though with better ligthing (see especially the camera’s love affair with a tweed worn by christian “cast-against-type” bale.) we get some hot buckskin leggings and a variety of english dresses on q'orianka kilcher, the royal outfits in king james’s court, and a elaborate traditional garb on “the naturals” (which jrc noted seemed overly ornamented.) all of this, along with the film’s conceptual vacuity and hollow pretense, made rrr feel as if we had been home alone with nothing to read but a ralph lauren catalogue from a season with a period theme.