Sweet moments with Ms. B

The Movie: “The New World”, half fiction and half based on true events but kind of twisted.

Subject of the movie:
“The New World” revolves around human experience during the 1600’s landing/exploration of America, specifically the preset State of Virginia, by British explorers. The storyline touches on basic human traits:

1) the primordial right to protect ones property

2) the nature of man to explore the unknown

3) the capacity of man to love, even someone totally alien to him/her.

The side-subject is nature and man’s respect and mastery over it. Dialogue lines like “I love to feel the grass” (Pocahontas, who spend so much tie roaming the meadows barefoot), scenes like burying a fish beside a tobacco plant to condition the soil (compost) and the use of tree branches to build their native houses instead of cutting down the tree itself (like what the Europeans did).

Storyline: (Category: Tragedy)
On the surface, “The New World” appears to be a romantic tragedy, an off-love triangle that is broken by the decision of the woman who would later die young. However, a historical significance is forwarded. The tragedy is more on the deprivation of the natives of their right to abode, their culture ad value slowly dying out.

The portrayal of events was balanced. There was no slant on the manner and outcome of the battles (superiority of the Europeans with their canons and guns was ably evened out by the strategy of the natives to use body paint to blend with the surroundings and their effective use of the terrain). No bias was felt on the romantic twist when the princess gave up on Capt. Smith, her first love who she thought was dead, for her husband who accepted his fate. On the human survival side, it was a worth the effort to portray the weak and distraught settlers inside the fort, famished from lack of food, only to be “saved” by the once friendly natives who came in, although unwelcome, with meat and other foodstuffs.

Making of the movie:
The movie would ultimately suffer from the brevity and simplicity of the story. In the middle part, dialogue, which was short and far in between, had to be supplemented by dragging sceneries. For lack of twists and turns of the storyline itself, and the need to come up with a 2-hour film, a considerable portion of the movie was purely visual: rivers, mountains, treetops, skyline and, of course, grass. Even the musical score suffered from the drag. It was repetitive and predictable relying on the sound quality of the musical instruments and percussion. There were moments when the background music would totally go: pure silence. Is this the way the Director intended the film to focus on the beauty of nature? Or did the composer just run out of notes to write! These silent episodes did not work. The Director might as well have taken still photos of the scenery, arrange them in sequence, and direct the viewer to walk in a queue to appreciate them and get the message.

Costume was excellent except for one glaring glitch: Pocahontas wore a thin, fine-woven fabric that could not have been available in the 1600’s native America. Well, that’s the movies!
Casting was well decided, the actors responded perfectly. The battle scene was overly gory and violent, one would wonder why there were still so many left standing after the siege of the fort. One can’t feel the before and after, in terms of number of people.

General impression:
“New World” is a brave attempt to make something out of a simple short story. Had it not been for the contrasts (culture difference, the natural country-side in Virginia vis-à-vis the unique architecturally manipulated gardens in Europe, and the facial features of native Americans vis-à-vis the Europeans), had it not been for the superb casting and realistic costumes, the movie would have been one of those so-so high budget films relegated into the archives to join “Water World” and other also-runs.

POCAHONTAS, the animation:
In retrospect, one would easily understand why Pocahontas was a musical. The music (dialogue in musical form) blended well with the flow of the streams, rivers and grass, the curve of the mountains and the riches of the treetops. But more importantly, singing the dialogue consumes time, and time was the enemy of this short story. The brevity and simplicit of the story required the shortest of dialogues.

If the actors in the “New World” were paid by the number of words they spoke, the legendary Christopher Plummer would end up a pauper!