If you allow it, if you lower your resistance, The New World is not a movie you simply watch – it is a movie that happens to you, overwhelms you, like the weather, or true love. Malick took his time with this, his one true masterpiece, and so should you. As everything else rots away, it will abide.
A beautiful retrospective piece on Terrence Malick’s The New World by John Patterson of The Guardian.
Count me as a disciple of The New World, too: I saw it five times in the theater, once completely alone. It’s among the tiniest class of films that I call experience films. Robert Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar (Wikipedia, Criterion’s DVD) is another experience film. They are films that affect you, aesthetically, emotionally. You walk out feeling different, changed; for me, I felt peaceful, enlightened. There is something pure about seeing them, where you don’t feel like you’re watching them, but that they are happening and you are witnessing it.
If you haven’t seen The New World, I suggest similar preparations to Patterson’s: wake up, have your cup of coffee and what not, then begin watching it while you’re still drowsy or just beginning to become awake. It sounds crazy, I know, but your life could change in a couple hours.
The New World: a misunderstood masterpiece? | Film | The Guardian
