The New World: The Extended Cut

undefined

Product Description ------------------- New World, The: Extended Cut (DVD) Set Contains: ------------- The way Terrence Malick makes movies, it is hard to know whether The New World: The Extended Cut is a definitive version, or just another step on the path to a 432-minute epic that looms somewhere in the future. Malick's deeply romantic and visually lush telling of the Pocahontas story stretches out here to 172 minutes, besting the original theatrical release of 150 minutes (and the curiously shortened 136-minute version that first found its way to DVD). Despite the swashbuckling cover for this DVD, which makes the film appear to be Braveheart in America, this Extended Cut orients the film even more to Pocahontas (Q'orianka Kilcher) than her two Englishmen, John Smith (Colin Farrell) and John Rolfe (Christian Bale). It could be argued that the extra running time allows for more spell-casting, as Malick and his gorgeous photography (along with the rapturous music by James Horner, with help from Mozart and Wagner) attempt to create a dream-state. In truth, the extra 22 minutes add little substantive material: along with specific sequences (the appearance of a mad "Natural"--i.e., Native--at the English settlement, for instance), many scenes have been slightly lengthened. None of which will change anybody's opinion of the film. Those that love it (and there are many) will find more to be delirious about, and those of us who find it fundamentally silly will discover nothing to soften that assessment. One hope: that in the future five-hour version, we'll find out what blink-and-you-miss-them actors such as Ben Chin and Noah Taylor are doing in this movie. --Robert Horton