Product Details

• Actors: Christian Bale, Colin Farrell, Michael Greyeyes, Ben Mendelsohn, Christopher Plummer
• Format: AC-3, Anamorphic, Color, Dolby, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround), English (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Studio: New Line Home Video
• DVD Release Date: October 14, 2008
• Run Time: 172 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (313 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B001BNFRB2
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #11,632 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
The legend of Pocahontas and John Smith receives a luminous and essential retelling by maverick filmmaker Terrence Malick. The facts of Virginia's first white settlers, circa 1607, have been told for eons and fortified by Disney's animated films: explorer Smith (Colin Farrell) and the Native American princess (newcomer Q'orianka Kilcher) bond when the two cultures meet, a flashpoint of curiosity and war lapping interchangeably at the shores of the new continent. Malick, who took a twenty year break between his second and third films (Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line), is a master of film poetry; the film washes over you, with minimal dialogue (you see characters speak on camera for less than a quarter of the film). The rest of the words are a stream-of-consciousness narration--a technique Malick has used before but never to such degree, creating a movie you feel more than watch. The film's beauty (shot in Virginia by Emmanuel Lubezki) and production design (by Jack Fisk) seems very organic, and in fact, organic is a great label for the movie as a whole, from the dreadful conditions of early Jamestown (it makes you wonder why Englishman would want to live there) to the luminescent love story. Malick is blessed with a cast that includes Wes Studi, August Schellenberg, Christopher Plummer, and Christian Bale (who, curiously, was also in the Disney production). Fourteen-year-old Kilcher, the soul of the film, is an amazing find, and Farrell, so often tagged as the next big thing, delivers his first exceptional performance since his stunning debut in Tigerland. James Horner provides a fine score, but is overshadowed by a Mozart concerto and a recurring prelude from Wagner's Das Rheingold, a scrumptious weaving of horns fit to fuel the gentle intoxication of this film. Note: the film was initially 150 minutes, and then trimmed to 135 by Malick before the regular theatrical run. It was also the first film shot in 65mm since Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet. --Doug Thomas

Product Description
Powhatan tribal people stare in wonder as three ships approach shore... It's a story every schoolchild knows. And, as told by filmmaker Terrence Malick (Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line) in this Extended Version with over 20 minutes of footage unseen in theaters, it's a story you never imagined. Working in part from firsthand histories and adding his extraordinary sense of image and human drama, Malick crafts a spellbinding tale of the Jamestown settlement, of cultures connecting and of deadly consequences when connections fray. Capt. John Smith (Colin Farrell), Pocahontas (Q'orianka Kilcher), John Rolfe (Christian Bale): You know the names. But you could never experience the visceral power of the stories behind those names until now.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

168 of 204 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Terrence Malick's Counterpart To The Thin Red Line, It's Beautiful, Visually Stunning, & Poetic, January 25, 2006

By	Kaya Savas (Bethesda, MD USA) - See all my reviews

MOVIE: Terrence Malick is not a mainstream director, his films while few in number, are incredibly rich with detail and visual language. Only a very few people can appreciate one of his films, mostly because they tend to run longer than mainstream movies and they don't follow the traditional formula. If you've seen The Thin Red Line then you know what a Terrence Malick film is. The Thin Red Line is in my opinion one of the finest cinematic accomplishmensts in the war genre. The New World is basically Malick's counterpart to The Thin Red Line. While The Thin Red Line was a look into the dark nature of mankind and how we destroy ourselves, The New World is the opposite of that. This film is about the celebration of the human spirit and the wonder of life. It is a truly poetic film that uses the story of John Smith and Pocahontas to express this commentary. The New World focuses on the clash of differences between two civilizations and how in the mess of differences two people are able to connect and see the beauty of each other. The movie moves slow though, and there are some parts where I found the editing to be a little confusing. Otherwise, I think the film is an incredible emotional journey filled with poetry and brilliant cinematic images. This film and The Thin Red Line are very similar in style. Malick even uses the same motif with birds as he does in The Thin Red Line. You also have the poetic narration of the main characters, and the narration itself can stand alone as poetry, it is truly remarkable. Beautiful landcapes captured brilliantly with the camera, long tracking shots, and many wide shots enhance the surrounding for the audience. He also uses his "sun through the trees" shot multiple times, which I personally loved in The Thin Red Line and even used it a couple times in my projects. All the shots are accompanied by James Horner's acceptable yet somewhat flawed score. In my opinion I thought the score sounded exactly like his work on The Perfect Storm. I was devestated when Hans Zimmer was detached from the project due to scheduling problems, because it was with The Thin Red Line that Zimmer composed his masterpiece. Horner does a good job in my opinion, but at times I felt like it was all too similar and sometimes lacking. The characters are all wonderfully expressed as well, and the change that Pocahontas goes through basically defines the film's central theme of change in surrounding while still retaining your individual personality. This film celebrates humanity and is his counterpart to The Thin Red Line, which basically shows the flaws of humanity. See both film if you have not already, and if you are new to Terrence Malick please have an open mind. This man is a wonderful filmmaker, I wish he wasn't so elusive and would actually do interviews as well do maybe more than 1 movie every decade. Then again, the fact that he has only directed 5 movies in his career since 1969 maybe is his greatest strength, and puts him on the list of top directors in the industry.

ACTING: The film is almost absent of any structural dialogue. Dialogue between characters is rare and brief yet oh so meaningful, and then there is the poetic narration. The actors do a fine job with facial expressions and evoking the right emotions. Colin Farrell is great and plays a character who is in love with Pocahontas and embraces her world. Christian Bale does a fantastic job as the man who falls in love with Pocahontas yet tries to make part of English society. Then we have newcomer Q'Orianka Kilcher who plays Pocahontas, and does an amazing job with the role. The acting is all emotion and hardly any dialogue.

BOTTOM LINE: I talked to my parents after I saw the film, they said that people walked out of the movie at the showing they saw, which didn't suprise me at all. I was happy that no one walked out of the showing I went to. The Thin Red Line got the same response by movie goers that this one is getting. They walk in expecting an intense action drama and end up at a poetry reading, but you can blame decieving marketing for that. Like I said, Terrence Malick isn't for everyone, but if you see it with an open mind you will experience a truly amazing and meaningful film.

185 of 232 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dreams, December 30, 2005

By	MICHAEL ACUNA (Southern California United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

"It seems like a dream." So intones John Smith (an emphatic and forceful Colin Farrell) describing his time with Pocahontas (a gorgeous newcomer, Q'Orianka Kilcher) in what would come to be known as Jamestown, Virginia circa 1607.
And so much like a dream is Terence Malick's newest "The New World." There are long stretches of this film in which there is only action without or with minimal sound: the Native Americans going about their day-to-day lives, working, playing, training, eating and celebrating while the King James sent Englishmen, looking for a quick way from England to the "Indies," basically go about their day scavenging for food, fighting amongst themselves and acting like savages. In fact, the Native Americans are mostly gorgeous, clean, well groomed while the supposedly civilized Englishmen are smelly, scuffy and ill-mannered. One of the funniest scenes comes at the beginning of the film when a Warrior approaches Captain Newport (Christopher Plummer) and squinches his nose due to the Captain's body odor. There is no doubt that the peaceful, though wary and intelligent Natives as presented here: regal, civilized are superior to the intruders.
In a mesmerizing almost stuperous mist, in a land so new and fresh and rife with possibilities, where a man can begin again without the sins of his past encroaching upon and stifling him, Malick sets the scene for the beginning of "The New World." There is such wonder, giddiness and hope in Malick's mise en scene that you can't help but be taken in by it all: what a chance we had to build a better world, what a chance we had to right the wrongs of our former world.
The central story is the one between Princess Pocahontas ("playful one") and Captain John Smith who arrives in Jamestown in shackles and is almost hung for treason but Captain Newport thinks better of it and instead sends Smith on a journey up the river to find and pay respects to Chief Powhatan. Powhatan instructs Smith to teach Pocahontas English and from this a romance develops.
Malick takes his time telling this story and "The New World" is slow, quiet, often silent and elegiac: he takes the time to stop, observe and ponder what his camera is showing...no quick jump cuts here to keep us supposedly impatient viewers interested. The world of Malick's films is a world filled with innocence and wonder: but wonder and innocence tempered with the realities of the brutal and the unforgiving. We are in Paradise here, Paradise before the fall: the fall is inevitable, of course and there is no doubt on whose doorstep the fault can be laid.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sweeping visions and grand history in a story of obsessive and mature love., January 23, 2007

By	C. B Collins Jr. (Atlanta, GA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The New World (DVD)

The tale of the English settlers at Jamestown gets a wonderful retelling here revealing the hunger, struggle, disease, hardship, cold, and superstition that the early settlers encountered in the new world. I actually think this film does a wonderful job of revealing the wonderful paradise that was the new world before the arrival of the Europeans. The native people here are shown as primitive aboriginals, complete with tatoos, rituals, a power hierarchy and complex societies. The views of Virginia are stunning in their beauty, what a wonderful sight Virginia must have been to these early European arrivals, and how dreadful their lives could become as they learned how to survive in a world full of plants, insects, and animals they had never encountered before. The film gets 4 stars for giving us a glimpse of what the encounters between the old and new world must have been like for all parties involved.

The love story between John Smith and Pocahontas is dream-like, a world not unlike Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Yet the story is one of JOhn Smith's betrayal of Pocahontas and the incredible price she pays for her loyalty to him. Yet the film is also one of her recovery from this obsessive love so that she is free to accept the love of her husband, John Rolfe. Colin Farrell does a great job of playing the brash, brave, adventurer John Smith. Smith sees the time he and Pocahontas were in love in her father's village as a dream that he must leave behind. She on the other hand saw it as a reality that she wished to pursue to the end.

Thus in some ways the film is also about obsessive first love and the strong mature love that holds relationships together for decades. Christian Bale plays Rolfe, a tobacco farmer, who loves and marries Pocahontas, and fears losing her to Smith, but is finally rewarded in the end when she realizes that Smith was an obsession that is now passing and she must cling to the true love of her life, her partner, Rolfe.

I found the Wagner music grand, sweeping, and perfect for the grandeur that is found in North America. This is a tale told with images rather than words. It is well done and not typical.