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The New World, 2005 (dir. Terrence Malick)

Ugh, this movie. What I love is that Malick was so successfully able to show (based on old descriptions from colonialists and such) what it must’ve been like for settlers to come to North America for the first time ever. You hear about people being able to just dip their hands into rivers and oceans and grasp dozens of fish—I mean, obviously, you can’t do that nowadays in the US. And you hear about the thousands of birds and the wildlife and…yeah. Malick did it. I think I read somewhere that he filmed in the more isolated parts of Canada. Yet another reason to envy Canada.

I saw this movie five times in theaters. The last time I was the only person in the theater, and I sat until the credits finished rolling. One of a very few films I would describe as majestic.

Also: all of the scenes that take place in America were actually filmed in Virginia. The production endeavored to shoot as near the actual place where the settlers arrived as possible. IMDb backs me up on this, and I believe I heard Jack Fisk (the production designer) say as much in an interview or maybe on the bonus features on the DVD/Blu-ray. In any case, this movie is just achingly beautiful. It harkens back to a time when the world was a mystery, and there’s a lot to be said in many regards for the beauty of mystery.

(via backshootingford)

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