The story of John Smith and Pocahontas is a familiar one. It was even the basis of a Disney cartoon. But iconoclastic filmmaker Terence Malick breathes new life into this oft-told tale in his film The New World (opening January 20). KPBS film critic Beth Accomando has this review and speaks with the films fourteen-year-old star Q'Orianka Kilcher. Everyone probably knows the story of Captain John Smith and Pocahontas.
JOHN SMITH: At the moment I was to die she threw herself upon me
Pocahontas is celebrated for saving the life of Smith, an English soldier in Jamestown who was to have been put to death in 1608 by the Indian princess father. Filmmaker Terence Malick uses this famous incident as the leaping off point for a lyrical mediation on love in The New World.
Despite a long career, Malick hasnt made many films. In fact, hes only made four in three decades. But with each successive work, hes been more inclined to dispense with dialogue and instead to rely on images to tell his story. So his visually stunning films Badlands , Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line and now The New World have become progressively more poetic.
