My introduction to director Terrence Malick happened seven years ago in spring of 1999.
Back then, unless you were a student at the Egyptian Cinema Institute, it was extremely difficult to watch films other than the standard Hollywood flicks screened in theatres in addition to a few more titles available in video stores
Most Egyptian filmgoers remember 1999 for American Beauty, The Sixth Sense, Being John Malkovich, or Shakespeare in Love.
For me, it was a different story.
The Thin Red Line that won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival of that year and boasted a cast headed by Sean Penn, John Travolta, Nick Nolte and George Clooney, became the defining moment of my passion for cinema.
The film had a low profile in Cairo and was screened for about three weeks before quietly fading away. I went to see it with some friends in a big, abandoned theatre in Nasr City.
And for the first time in my life, I was hypnotized for three whole hours.
By the end of the film, the hypnosis gave way to delirium. After we left the theatre, we walked for about 20 minutes without uttering a single word to each other.
Ever that day, The Thin Red Line, as well as Malick s only two other films Badlands (1973) and Days of Heaven (1978) remain the reason why I fell in love with cinema in the first place.
Malick s latest film, The New World has finally reached Egypt s silver screens to end this modest cinematic year on a very high note.
The New World is a retelling of the semi-true story of the Indian Princess Pocahontas and her doomed love affair with the American explorer John Smith.
The film starts with Smith (Colin Farrell) traveling to Virginia in 1607 on an expedition to search for gold.
Legend has it that Pocahontas, the youngest and favorite daughter of an Indian king, saved Smith from execution by the natives. Later on, Pocahontas would help the Europeans bolster their position in the new land; marry tobacco merchant John Rolfe after being baptized as a Christian; have his child and die in England at 22.
Many believe that her love story with Smith was nothing more than a fictitious tale created in the diaries of its writer who frequently boasted about his amorous affairs.
Yet the truth behind the precise nature of Smith s relationship with Pocahontas is not the point of the film. The New World is a film about discovery, loss and the never-ending conflict between the civilized and the primitive worlds.
The movie is filmed from various subjective points of view. Smith seems baffled by the paradise that surrounds him; and all his hatred, anger and rebellion are purged by the wholesomeness of the land and the innocence that disrupts his soul with the first physical contact with Pocahontas.
The New World , like Malick s previous pictures, is not just a movie, it s art with a capital A.
Each frame of the film throbs with beauty, each step Pocahontas makes outside her world is so moving that Virginia is not merely a backdrop in the film but is transformed into a main character.
The plot and narrative formula of “The New World is more accessible than Malick’s former films. Yet its greatness lies in neither the structure not the characters, but in the movie’s overall mood, enhanced by a perfect fusion between the visuals, the music, the dialogue and the poetry of its motion. Together these elements set the film on a league of their own.
Marked by multiple voice-overs by the three protagonists, the movie does not use the technique in the traditional way where narrators comment on certain events. The Malick trade-mark dreamy whispers are almost like emotional meanderings the characters use to open up a window for viewers to look inside their souls.
The natives America looks and feels like the most ideal place God created. Malick’s depiction of how it is gradually destroyed by the Europeans treads a fine line between reality and the dream-like spirit of the place.
The original America for Smith (as it is for us) is the embodiment of the absolute; a utopia untouched by greed, deceit or envy. Malick recreates this world, sucks you into it and slowly, naturally and gently injects you with mournful sentiments analogous to tearful dreams.
The Europeans came to America to seize it and impose their beliefs, culture and traditions upon it. They weren t truly concerned with understanding the indigenous inhabitants and incorporating their ethos. What they intended, and consequently accomplished, was to transform the “new world into a bigger, more lavish model of their own “old world.
Colin Farrell has reached new heights in this film, where he is more confident and composed than ever before; Christian Bale delivers a poignant, nuanced performance as the faithful, loving Rolfe and newcomer Q Orianka Kilcher steals the show as a girl curious about a world that ultimately causes her demise with its confinements.
Describing The New World as a cinematic experience, remains difficult. The film is definitely not mainstream and its slow pace and lack of a formula adhering to Hollywood conventions might not draw in the large crowds.
But for those patient enough to ponder on its splendor, this movie slowly evolves into an almost spiritual experience.
Forget about anything else playing this week and catch this Malick masterpiece because, take my word, it may be another decade before he makes another comeback.
