The New World

English ships reach the Virginia coast in 1607. The film treats the meeting of John Smith and Pocahontas not as adventure but as two worlds destroying each other while trying to understand each other. Terrence Malick started writing it in the late seventies. After The Thin Red Line he worked on a Che Guevara project, then returned to this in March 2004 and was shooting by July. It was his first collaboration with Emmanuel Lubezki, built on natural light. Filming took place in Virginia and at Hatfield House in England, running three and a half months and finishing in November 2004. Three versions exist: 150 minutes for the limited release in December 2005, 136 minutes for the wide release in January 2006, and a 172-minute extended cut on DVD in October 2008. Malick changed voiceovers and reordered sequences between them. Q'orianka Kilcher was introduced as Pocahontas. The film gathered nominations across many bodies but only one Oscar nomination, for Lubezki's cinematography. On a 30 million dollar budget it grossed 49.3 million and was judged a disappointment, before later being counted among the decade's best. Who it is for: viewers who love Malick's voiceover and natural light. Who it is not for: anyone who wants plot. The film deliberately dissolves narrative into feeling.