USA: Cast and crew of "The New World" talk about the film and its director, Terrence Malick
- 00:00:17
- ITN Source
USA: Cast and crew of "The New World" talk about the film and its director, Terrence Malick
"The New World," Terrence Malick's tale about the "Indian princess" Pocahontas and English soldier of fortune John Smith, is not an typical studio epic. For one, it maintains a slow rhythm and refrains from exploiting the violence or sex inherent in the story. Instead, critics have called the picture "a visual tone poem" because of its dreamy cinematic style and pastoral mood. In the film, the viewer is transported into the 17th Century with painted natives juxtaposed against white-skinned, armor-clad intruders. The natives have little sense of possessions but do have a strong social order. The settlers, most unprepared to deal with a wilderness, follow an ethos of aggression and greed; a violent clash is inevitable. In one of the skirmishes, John Smith (Colin Farrell) is taken prisoner. His life is spared by the chief when his favorite daughter, Pocahontas (Q'Orianka Kilcher), begs for mercy. The chief releases Smith to this teenager so the two can learn each other's language and he might gain insight into the newcomers' intentions. What they do, of course, is fall in love, though their romance is sorely tested and eventually breaks apart. 15-year old Q'Orianka Kilcher, born to a Quechua Indian father and a Swiss mother, says she was entirely unprepared for the Hollywood maelstrom that came with the project. "I actually honestly didn't have a clue what I was getting myself into or that it was going to be something this big," she said, "because I didn't know who Terrence Malick was, or Colin Farrell or Christian Bale for that matter, so yeah, it's been all one big surprise one after the other." Still, despite her relative innocence, critics have generally applauded her on-screen performance. Colin Farrell had his own compliments. "She kind of has a wisdom that's far beyond her years and just a beautiful strength of spirit, but an unimaginable gentility about her as well and compassion that was just a perfect marriage for her to play this character, you know," he remarked. Director Terrence Malick, known for his free-form shooting style and for his resistance to public appearances of any kind, brought his cast and crew to the swamps of Virginia, where English settlers of the era in fact arrived. Farrell says the improvisational approach was a novel experience, adding: "I've been doing this job for, whatever, nine or ten years, but I had no experience in respect to this way of working. It was like a first time out for me, for all of us I think. It was just very fresh and new and there was a lot of vitality to the way he [Malick] shot and an incredible energy, you know, an incredible energy. So we were all just experiencing it with child's eyes, you know?" Christian Bale, who plays Pocahontas' eventual husband John Rolfe, agreed. "He doesn't wish to sit down and have rehearsals," Bale said of Malick. "The first take was the first time that we had ever done the scene. And I like that way of working very much with him. He wanted to see mistakes, he wanted to see accidents, which can often end up being the finest moments in any movie because it's absolutely sincere." "The New World" has opened in limited release and will be shown widely in Europe and North America starting on January 13, 2006.
ITN Source | January 5, 2006
