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The New World

Where to watch.

Watch The New World with a subscription on Max, rent on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV.

What to Know

Despite arresting visuals and strong lead performances, The New World suffers from an unfocused narrative that will challenge viewers' attention spans over its 2 1/2 hours.

Critics Reviews

Audience reviews, cast & crew.

Terrence Malick

Colin Farrell

Christian Bale

Q'orianka Kilcher

Jason Aaron Baca

Greg Cooper

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The Pocahontas story stripped bare

Colin Farrell strikes an "Aguirre"-like pose as the English explorer John Smith in "The New World."

Terrence Malick’s “The New World” strips away all the fancy and lore from the story of Pocahontas and her tribe and the English settlers at Jamestown, and imagines how new and strange these people must have seemed to one another. If the Indians stared in disbelief at the English ships, the English were no less awed by the somber beauty of the new land and its people. They called the Indians “the naturals,” little understanding how well the term applied.

Malick strives throughout his film to imagine how the two civilizations met and began to speak when they were utterly unknown to one another. We know with four centuries of hindsight all the sad aftermath, but it is crucial to “The New World” that it does not know what history holds. These people regard one another in complete novelty, and at times with a certain humility imposed by nature. The Indians live because they submit to the realities of their land, and the English nearly die because they are ignorant and arrogant.

Like his films “ Days of Heaven ” and “ The Thin Red Line ,” Malick’s “The New World” places nature in the foreground, instead of using it as a picturesque backdrop as other stories might. He uses voice-over narration by the principal characters to tell the story from their individual points of view. We hear Capt. John Smith describe Pocahontas: “She exceeded the others not only in beauty and proportion, but in wit and spirit, too.” And later the settler John Rolfe recalls his first meeting: “When first I saw her, she was regarded as someone broken, lost.”

“The New World” is Pocahontas’ story, although the movie deliberately never calls her by any name. She is the bridge between the two peoples. Played by a 14-year-old actress named Q'orianka Kilcher as a tall, grave, inquisitive young woman, she does not “fall in love” with John Smith, as the children’s books tell it, but saves his life — throwing herself on his body when he is about to be killed on the order of her father the chief — for far more complex reasons. The movie implies, rather than says, that she is driven by curiosity about these strange visitors, and empathy with their plight as strangers, and with admiration for Smith’s reckless and intrepid courage. If love later plays a role, it is not modern romantic love so much as a pure instinctive version.

And what of Smith ( Colin Farrell )? To see him is to know he knows the fleshpots of London and has been raised without regard for women. He is a troublemaker, under sentence of death by the expedition leader, Capt. Newport ( Christopher Plummer ) for mutinous grumblings. Yet when he first sees Pocahontas, she teaches him new feelings by her dignity and strangeness. There is a scene where Pocahontas and Smith teach each other simple words in their own languages, words for sky, eyes, lips, and the scene could seem contrived but it doesn’t, because they play it with such a tender feeling of discovery.

Smith is not fair with Pocahontas. Perhaps you know the story, but if you don’t, I’ll let the movie fill in the details. She later encounters the settler John Rolfe ( Christian Bale ), and from him finds loyalty and honesty. Her father, the old chief Powhatan ( August Schellenberg ), would have her killed for her transgressions, but “I cannot give you up to die. I am too old for it.” Abandoned by her tribe, she is forced to live with the English. Rolfe returns with her to England, where she meets the king and is a London sensation, although that story, too, is well-known.

There is a meeting that she has in England, however, that Malick handles with almost trembling tact, in which she deals with a truth hidden from her, and addresses it with unwavering honesty. What Malick focuses on is her feelings as a person who might as well have been transported to another planet. Wearing strange clothes, speaking a strange language, she can depend only on those few she trusts, and on her idea of herself.

The are two new worlds in this film, the one the English discover, and the one Pocahontas discovers. Both discoveries center on the word “new,” and what distinguishes Malick’s film is how firmly he refuses to know more than he should in Virginia in 1607 or London a few years later. The events in his film, including the tragic battles between the Indians and the settlers, seem to be happening for the first time. No one here has read a history book from the future.

There are the familiar stories of the Indians helping the English survive the first winter, of how they teach the lore of planting corn and laying up stores for the winter. We are surprised to see how makeshift and vulnerable the English forts are, how evolved the Indian culture is, how these two civilizations could have built something new together — but could not, because what both societies knew at that time did not permit it. Pocahontas could have brought them together. In a small way, she did. She was given the gift of sensing the whole picture, and that is what Malick founds his film on, not tawdry stories of love and adventure. He is a visionary, and this story requires one.

This review is based on a viewing of the re-edited version of “The New World,” which runs about 130 minutes; I also saw the original 150-minute version and noticed no startling changes.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

The New World

• Yorick Van Wageningen as Capt. Argall
• Colin Farrell as Capt. John Smith
• August Schellenberg as Powhatan
• Irene Bedard as Pocahontas' Mother
• Wes Studi as Opechancanough
• David Thewlis as Wingfield
• Q’orianka Kilcher as Pocahontas
• John Savage as Savage
• Christian Bale as John Rolfe
• Christopher Plummer as Capt. Newport

Directed and written by

• Terrence Malick

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Parents' guide to, the new world.

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 2 Reviews
• Kids Say 2 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

By Cynthia Fuchs , based on child development research. How do we rate?

Poetic telling of John Smith and Pocahontas myth.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that this film is focused on a clash of civilizations, European and Native Indian, beginning in 1607. Depicted largely in metaphorical imagery of woods, fields, rivers, and the settlement called Jamestown, the movie shows the difficulty of intercultural communication. It includes battle scenes …

Why Age 13+?

Battle scenes include explosions, spearings, shootings, and beatings.

Some smoking and drinking by the Europeans; Native rituals involve hallucinatory

Kissing and nuzzling in primitive setting; declarations of love.

Any Positive Content?

Old world and New World encounters are the subject of this movie. European settl

It is hard to call out anything in this film as role model worthy because of the

Violence & Scariness

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Some smoking and drinking by the Europeans; Native rituals involve hallucinatory images.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

Old world and New World encounters are the subject of this movie. European settlers corrupt the land and abuse the Native peoples already residing in the "New World."

Positive Role Models

It is hard to call out anything in this film as role model worthy because of the incredibly culturally sensitive material being explored. Needless to say, wrongs of the past do not exist in a vacuum, and this film can certainly instigate a discussion between you and your teen about America's shared colonial past.

Parents need to know that this film is focused on a clash of civilizations, European and Native Indian, beginning in 1607. Depicted largely in metaphorical imagery of woods, fields, rivers, and the settlement called Jamestown, the movie shows the difficulty of intercultural communication. It includes battle scenes (with guns, spears, tomahawks, explosions, and bloody bodies), as well as long, lyrical (non-narrative) passages that might be uninteresting for some younger viewers. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (2)
• Kids say (2)

Based on 2 parent reviews

Great but there's Nudity

If you understand native american culture and spirituality, what's the story.

Ambitious and gorgeous, Terrence Malick's THE NEW WORLD revisits the myth of the circa-1607 romance between Captain John Smith (Colin Farrell) and Pocahontas (Q'Orianka Kilcher), revealing its characters' yearnings in landscapes and voiceovers. The romance occurs as Smith stays for months with the tribe -- whom the Europeans deem "the naturals" -- in an ostensible effort to help his own men survive, to win favor and learn strategies of living with the land rather than pitted against it. But even though Smith extols his hosts' communal values ("They no jealousy, no sense of possession"), he can't absorb them. Instead, he is bedeviled by his ambition, enticed by a new voyage to discover the Indies, leaving behind a lie for Pocahontas, that he's died at sea, so he never need return to her. Though she mourns for her lost love, she agrees to marry the solid, loyal, unexciting John Rolfe (Christian Bale).

Is It Any Good?

Malick's film is of two minds. On one hand, it refutes this pretty story by making Smith overtly a problem, an arrogant adventurer. On another, it offers poetic images to suggest she continues to love this white invader even after he abandons her.

Impressionistic as his films will be, Malick brings to bear on this saga a fascinated (and at times, fascinating) patience, as his camera wafts over natural woodsy scenes or dense rainfalls. Pocahontas warns John Rolfe, "There are things you don't know, things you could not guess." Ah yes, but her ripe mystery is so captivating that he can't not want her. However Rolfe or Smith or even you comprehend her, Pocahontas' tragedy is just this desire, that has so little to do with her.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the myth of John Smith and Pocahontas: given that she was probably 10 or 11 when they first met (and she saved him from death ordered by her father, a king), why might stories persist that theirs was a romance, based in mutual love and interests?

How does this version differ from the 1995 animated Disney musical, Pocahontas ?

Movie Details

• In theaters : December 23, 2005
• On DVD or streaming : May 9, 2006
• Cast : Christian Bale , Colin Farrell , Q'Orianka Kilcher
• Director : Terrence Malick
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Indigenous actors, Latino actors, Multiracial actors
• Studio : New Line
• Genre : Drama
• Run time : 150 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : some intense battle sequences
• Last updated : October 14, 2022

Did we miss something on diversity?

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The New World: Dwelling in Malick’s New World

By Tom Gunning

Jul 25, 2016

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I take SPACE to be the central fact to man born in America, from Folsom Cave to now. I spell it large because it comes large here. Large, and without mercy. —Charles Olson

W hen The New World was released in 2005, it was only the third film Terrence Malick had produced since his premiere with Badlands in 1973, with a two-decade gap between Days of Heaven (1978) and The   Thin Red Line (1998). These periods of silence not only generated anticipation for each new film, they also caused speculation about the shape of the career of a director who many, including myself, felt was emerging as the strongest voice in American cinema. The Thin Red Line, with its multiplicity of viewpoints and war setting, had diverged so sharply from the quieter, single-character focus of Malick’s first two films that the direction his filmmaking was taking seemed unclear. Seven years later, The New World clarified the shape of his vision and initiated a period of increased productivity for the filmmaker. This pivotal work refined the transformations The Thin Red Line had introduced, focusing again on a crucial historical event and continuing with his new multivoice approach, while simultaneously forging links to his earlier films, particularly with the centrality of a young female character. And with The New World, he moved his career-long exploration of American space, of how we dwell in and share this land, into questions of both personal destiny and humankind’s place within the universe.

Malick does not let us forget the horror of history: the gradual genocide of the Powhatan natives of Virginia began soon after the founding of Jamestown in 1607. The New World shows the beginning of this destruction, but Malick’s title offers more than bitter irony. The film unfolds as a Blakean epic, both personal and historical, of the journey from innocence to experience. Rather than enacting a melodrama of innocence betrayed, Malick portrays the history of the new land and his protagonist, the daughter of the Powhatan chief—referred to only as “the princess” in the film but identified as Pocahontas in the credits—as both tragic and transformative. Initial dreams of love and harmony vanish through betrayal and the madness of violence; but simultaneously, new possibilities emerge. Malick sees experience as not simple disillusionment but a reshaping of nature through an imagination that has been tested by loss and sustained by memory.

Malick’s fans and detractors agree on the unique marks of his style: the highly aesthetic quality of his images, especially of nature; his consistent use of voice-over narration; and the looseness of his narrative form. I believe beauty, difficult as it may be to define, holds a key to Malick’s style, but one that evades our immediate grasp. Beauty in Malick’s work involves more than pleasing visual compositions. I have heard intelligent viewers dismiss his films as “too pretty.” Admittedly, his often breathtaking images may conceal the radical nature of his filmmaking, since in the modern era, serious art often prefers the discordant or the everyday, and avoids the comfort that “lovely images” seem to offer. But rather than reassuring, Malick’s images inspire the awe associated with the sublime, which the Romantics defined as the beauty that springs from terror. If we probe them, they deeply unsettle us.

Malick’s landscapes, for instance, often reveal an essential alienation between his characters and the world they live in. In Badlands, the vast spaces of the American plains counterpoint the sordid story of a crime and murder spree carried out by disaffected youths. Malick invites us to question how the openness and freedom of this landscape interact with the characters’ lack of empathy with their victims, or with their narrow understanding of their own emotions. In his films, the glory of nature creates not a lyrical mood but dissonance: the lush South Seas jungles and the carnage of modern warfare in The Thin Red Line, or the sunsets that gild the backbreaking labor in the wheat fields of Days of Heaven. Can Malick characters experience the beauty he places them in?

This disconnect between characters and landscape dominates Malick’s two earliest films, where the narrators, Holly and Linda, respectively, witness the events around them with an incomprehension and wonder that often keep them from taking action. Beginning with The   Thin Red Line, however, Malick’s characters begin to openly acknowledge the enigma the landscape poses. In that film, Private Witt not only attempts to figure out his relation to the battle he is immersed in but strives to understand the role of war deep within the structure of the universe. Even more explicitly, the voice-overs of Pocahontas, Captain John Smith, and tobacco planter John Rolfe in The New World question the nature of the worlds they find themselves in. Pocahontas resembles Holly and Linda, as a young woman thrown into a world of violent transformation, and, like them, she regards this world with intense curiosity. But her thoughts have a new deeply questioning and more mature tone. This increased emphasis on interrogating the meaning of things transforms the role of voice-over narration in Malick’s later films.

Holly’s voice-over in Badlands recalls film noirs, where characters narrate fateful events in retrospect. But more than an anguished confession, Holly’s narration presents a pastiche of phrases from “true confession” magazines of the 1950s. Through this mesh of clichés, we discover her inability to see her situation outside of the ready-made plots she has consumed. This limited perception renders her plight even more poignant. The disparity between a character’s spoken account and the events we see continues in Days of Heaven, albeit with an increase in curiosity on the part of the young witness. An adult affair of passion and betrayal is narrated by Linda, a preadolescent girl, who, although knowing beyond her years, cannot grasp all that she sees. Her narration expresses her awe at the passion of this adult world, as well as her pragmatic attempt to find a way to survive within it.

This gap between human comprehension and the beauty and violence of the world underscores the ambivalent role that the image plays in Malick’s work. His filmmaking captures a cinematic vision that may lie beyond ordinary human perception; something characters perceive only intermittently and must struggle to comprehend. This conflict between seeing and understanding becomes more than a question of individual point of view. And from The Thin Red Line on, Malick’s voice-over diffuses; rather than presenting a single character’s account of events, it selectively “tunes in” to the interior monologues of a number of characters. These interwoven voices fashion a diverse tapestry of questions that express human awe and incomprehension at the order and disorder of the cosmos.

Recurringly, these voices question some unnamed entity about the nature of things. The New World asks, “Who are you?”; The Tree of Life (2011), “Where are you?”; and To the Wonder (2012), “Where am I?” Often, as in The New World, these questions address a lover. But they also interrogate the world and the forces that run through it (in The Thin Red Line, a voice-over asks: “Who are you, that lives in all these many forms?”). Malick’s images also pose questions, often as visual paradoxes. Many of his most powerful (and sublime) ones show the destructive forces of nature—fire especially. Destruction does not oppose beauty; it is often its cause. As a voice-over in The Thin Red Line says, nature seems to be at war with itself. The sequence of creation that opens The Tree of Life teems with violent energy as much as with sustaining growth. The way of nature may be beautiful, but it is also terrifying. If Malick’s frequent image of sunlight filtering through foliage promises grace or harmony, it remains distant from the world that human beings dwell in.

Beginning with The New World, Malick’s storytelling has become increasingly elliptical, creating gaps in time, space, and motivation that the viewer must negotiate. As his use of voice-over has shifted away from recounting the story, Malick’s editing has also become more concerned with the looser processes of observation and speculation. He often ignores the protocols of classical editing. Most Hollywood films build their stories out of scenes, dramatic blocks of continuous space and time. As David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson show in their magisterial The Classical Hollywood Cinema, classical editing divides up and then reassembles space to articulate a story. In a typical classical scene, a wide-angle long shot establishes the space in which an action and dialogue will take place. Successive shots dissect this space into closer views from different angles, emphasizing dramatic moments (a cut as a character asks a question or reacts to something said; close-ups enlarging objects or stressing actions of significance). The shifts in angle or camera distance follow the flow of dialogue and action. The rules of classical editing maintain the continuity of dramatic space and time over the cuts, minimizing and concealing gaps.

Malick has fashioned his own alternative to continuity editing, and The New World represents his mastery of this form. Shots rarely interlock seamlessly; the editing does not systematically maintain a coherent space or continuous time. Instead, shots remain relatively independent, as gaps in time or a shift in location often occurs between them. Scenes that do play within a unity of space and time include jump cuts in action or camera positions that fracture the scene. Shots cluster together around an action or theme, rather than fitting into predetermined patterns, so that, more than a succession of unified dramatic blocks of time and space, Malick crafts series of shots whose temporal and spatial relation remains looser, an inquisitive vision. Curiosity, more than drama, drives The New World, a searching regard that opens itself to the world and its mysteries, unsure of what it will find. Characters observe more than they do things. Searching camera movements embody and propel this exploration, sometimes following a character but often setting off on their own, beckoning characters or viewers beyond the frame to a new discovery.

Appearing before the credits, the first shot of The New World initiates this game of hide-and-seek with us. Undulating water reflects a deep blue sky, clouds that catch the sunlight, and towering treetops. This first image inverts the world and wavers unsteadily as it reveals a space outside its frame, which we are invited to imagine. But Malick withholds a direct view of this new world from us. The image itself transforms as a mass of aquatic plants moves through the frame just beneath the water. For a moment, we are unsure if the camera is moving or the water flowing, and if the mottled mass is another reflection or something lurking beneath the surface. Instead of resolving our questions, Malick cuts away.

A young woman appears, shot from below and framed so that her face remains concealed. On the soundtrack, we hear the invocation of a spirit, also unseen—perhaps invisible. In this two-shot sequence, Malick introduces the film’s location and its main character, but obliquely, emphasizing their mysterious quality. These images remain incomplete but richly evocative. Our curiosity aroused, we are invited to speculate about how they fit together. But rather than firmly grounding us, the next shots (after the credits) submerge us below the surface of the water. As we gaze through this liquid medium at the grace of young women swimming, we become increasingly aware of the light that shines into the depths from above. The camera eventually looks up through the rippling medium toward the surface, glimpsing Powhatans on the shore, men on rocks who point offscreen. The following shot skims swiftly over the surface of the sea, then rises, revealing English ships at anchor. Malick gives us this dramatic incident in a curious manner, not focusing exclusively on the essential narrative event of the natives’ discovery of alien invaders but dwelling on the element of water and what it does to vision.

While classical editing breaks up space to dramatize a story, The New World foregrounds space and place over personal drama. Master cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s camera movement, depth of field, and use of available light respect the integrity of location and atmosphere. In fact, The New World was shot mainly on location, and when sets were constructed, as the historical nature of the film demanded, production designer Jack Fisk created a fully realized environment rather then the three-walled sets of a Hollywood soundstage. Malick tells this story of the clash of cultures through contrasting environments more than dialogue or character conflicts. The openness to nature of the Powhatan village starkly opposes the confined and filthy James Fort.

But as intense as this conflict of spaces may be, the portrayal of London during Pocahontas’s visit allows Malick to transcend a simplistic plot of nature despoiled by corrupt civilization. The spaces of London’s busy streets, university courtyards, and royal court generate a wonder in Pocahontas that recalls Smith’s wide-eyed exploration of the new world of Virginia. As Pocahontas races with her son through the sculpted hedges of a British formal garden, this manicured nature may subdue the wildness Virginia offered. But, like Pocahontas’s own recognition of the limits of her youthful romance with John Smith and her gradual acceptance of her husband’s love, this cultured space may indicate that, while something has been lost, something else has been gained.

The New World tells a tragic story: a loss of promise, the end of a dream of a return to a golden age. But the film includes two complementary voyages of discovery: not only that of the English to Virginia but also that of the Virginian Pocahontas to England. The environment of London in the era of Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, and John Dee may offer some compensation for the horror wrought by imperialism. If the New World became the site of genocide rather than a new Garden of Eden, Malick nonetheless finds value in the confluence of technology and art that Heidegger calls by the Greek term techné . Acknowledging the betrayals and exploitation that founded our modern world, Malick’s cinema also understands that true tragedy forbids simple nostalgia for a lost world.

Malick’s cinema dwells on space, both the historical and geographic space that has been central to the American experience and the cinematic space created through editing and camera movement. The American landscape struck the first visitors to this continent with awe and a sense of possibility, a reaction that (as Malick makes especially clear in To the Wonder ) often leads to reckless exploitation. The New World shows that the first impulse of European settlers in America was to enclose space rather than to dwell in its openness. As much as Malick understands this impulse as tragic, he envisions more than a return to nature as a response. In his treatment of the Native peoples’ agriculture, villages, religious rites, and games, Malick portrays a canny and resourceful culture that has fashioned a way to live within its environment. His ideal of a new world is perhaps best embodied in the phrase Heidegger took from the great German poet Friedrich Hölderlin: “Poetically man dwells.” Poetry, like patterns of culture or the complex technology of architecture—or the techniques of cinema—belongs to techné . Maturity and experience may find in art, architecture, landscaping, and cinema the possibility of founding a human world within natural space. Through the uniquely spatial and visual language of cinema, Malick searches for a way technology can envision a space of dwelling—a task he recognizes will not always be pretty, but may be sublime.

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The New World (2005)

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The New World

Time out says, release details.

• Release date: Friday 27 January 2006
• Duration: 150 mins

Cast and crew

• Director: Terrence Malick
• Screenwriter: Terrence Malick
• Christopher Plummer
• Q'orianka Kilcher
• Raoul Trujillo
• Jonathan Pryce
• Colin Farrell
• August Schellenberg
• Christian Bale
• David Thewlis

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