Heavily disputed as actual history, English explorer John Smith’s account of being captured by the Powhatan tribe in 1608 and subsequently having his life saved by the chief’s daughter Matoaka (better known by her nickname Pocahontas) has nonetheless endured in popular yarns of American colonial history. Mostly sidestepping the rampant death and cannibalism that accompanied the actual founding of Jamestown, The New World, iconoclastic director Terrence Malick’s fourth film in as many decades, instead imagines a mythic romance between a rebellious Smith (doe-eyed beefcake Colin Farrell) and a bravely independent Matoaka (Q’orianka Kilcher, tremendous in her first major screen performance). The New World follows Matoaka through her relationship with Smith, the first Anglo-Powhatan War, her subsequent marriage to tobacco magnate John Rolfe, and, in one of the most transcendent passages in 21st century cinema, her final voyage to a new world of her own: England. Despite mucking around with narrative particulars, Malick approached The New World with a fierce dedication to verisimilitude, going so far as to write dialog for the film’s Native characters in a form of Powhatan language specially reconstructed for the film after being functionally extinct for centuries. The New World has been released in a variety of cuts, including a 135-minute wide release edit and a nearly three-hour expanded home video version. For this presentation, we will be screening Malick’s original, infrequently revived theatrical cut.

35mm from Park Circus

Preceded by: Terrence Malick trailer reel – 8 min – 35mm