Song of the earth
Song of the earth
Das Rheingold and Terrence Malicks The New World
Author : Jos Hermans
The eccentric and enigmatic filmmaker Terrence Malick, known for his legendary media shyness, is also known for spending hours in the woods watching birds like a kind of Siegfried. Not coincidentally, nature is given a starring role in his work. If you follow his camera, your gaze is transported to a startled bird, a blade of grass swaying in the wind, a wave in the water. As a result, his characters always look a little strange and out of place, like intruders in a wild and unspoiled area where they don't belong. Malick writes his scenarios from both a social and philosophical point of view. This is no different in his underrated 2005 masterpiece The New World, the historical account of the first English settlement in America. The film is remarkable for its cinematography, its philosophical scope and its intoxicating spirituality, congenially embodied by 15-year-old Q'Orianka Kilcher as Pocahontas. Richard Wagner borrowed his prelude to Das Rheingold as a structuring element.
Synopsis
In mid-May 1607, the Powhatan Indians see something that attracts more than their usual attention. Along the banks of the James River, three boats dock with 104 strangers aboard. The Indians are very curious and anxious at the same time. The strange visitors are white, wearing clothes all over their bodies and producing unintelligible sounds. The young Indian princess Pocahontas is strongly attracted to the whole scene, especially when her eye catches Captain John Smith. Gradually, a strong bond develops between the two. The same cannot be said of the two communities: the English colonists and the native Indians. The initial mutual distrust grows into a violent showdown that the Indians cannot win due to their lack of firearms. Meanwhile, the mutual affection between the native princess and John Smith intersects with the fortunes of the colonial James Fort. The princess saves the white fort inhabitants from starvation during the cold winter months. Smith realizes that under the circumstances he will find it difficult to sustain his relationship with the princess. He leaves for England to lead a new expedition, leaving the princess under the delusion that he perished at sea. She mourns. In turn, she experiences the negative consequences of her association with Smith and the colonists. Her father Powhatan banishes her. She eventually ends up as a hostage at the Jamestown fort where she meets the young widower and planter John Rolfe. He asks her to marry him. She is given the Christian baptismal name Rebecca, helps her husband successfully expand his tobacco plantation and becomes the mother of Thomas. When she accidentally learns that Smith is alive after all, she becomes confused. Rolfe takes her to England where he asks Smith for a visit so that his Rebecca can come to terms with her feelings for Smith. She says goodbye to Smith and chooses the warm protection she receives from her husband Rolfe. Just before her return to her motherland, she falls ill and dies.
Cinematography
Sylvain De Bleeckere : "The opening image is immediately the logo of the film: the water surface. It creates a fluid image that contrasts with a stable and static image. Something is always moving, there is no complete standstill. From that image a whole fluid sound world starts: the natural music of birds and crickets and the cultural music of Wagner's prelude to Das Rheingold. Joining it is the human voice. The Indian princess prays to the great Spirit. The whole scene introduces a poetic intro that accompanies all subsequent images. The viewer enters an image and sound universe that is permanently in motion. Technically, this is always the case with film. Film is not without reason the art of the moving image: film as the kinetic art par excellence. With Malick, the ordinary meaning of "moving" images does not apply. With him, the cinematic art becomes fluid in every sense. In the final sequence, he films in close-up the flowing water flowing over a natural stone, an image that is expanded into that of running water making its way over a batch of large stones. For Malick, the water that never stops flowing is the very metaphor of his cinematography.
He finds it in the music of Wagner. Violins and horns evoke a flow of sound that affirms its presence in an eternal play of ebb and flow. Malick is undoubtedly the master of the voice-over. The words articulate the inner that moves in the mindspace of prayer and meditation. The bare recording of conversations as a function of the progress of the dramatic narrative, has no place in Malick's method. The narrative method proceeds through sequences of images that he composes in the editing room. During the long editing process, he records the voice-over voices. There they become part of a fluid universe of sound and images. The film was given a slow and undulating rhythm that fits seamlessly with Wagner's music of Das Rheingold.
Malick's fluid cinematography takes on its full meaning from its philosophical vision. He is in every sense a cinematic thinker. His characters are not pure dramatic characters. They participate in the action, they are even in the middle of it, but at the same time they move on the sidelines of that action. They consider what is happening and happening to them. The three key characters of The New World move in the same circle. They have an inner life. They experience a spiritual consciousness. In a philosophical sense the film is written in the tone of an elegy. Over the historical narrative, Malick lays the mourning garment of the memory of the lost dream of a new beginning, of a new world. The opening musical quote of Das Rheingold already contains the mournful sounds on which the entire cycle of Der Ring des Nibelungen culminates, the apocalyptic final part of Götterdämmerung, the collapse of an entire civilization."
Philosophically, Malick likewise thematizes that demise of the dream of the New World which dies upon the death of the princess. In this she resembles that other character of nature, Siegfried. When she dies, the good forces that saved Smith's life disappear after which there could have been a real encounter and mutual enrichment. On this point, Malick speaks clearly. European culture was unable to see the new and understand what was happening. In the film, Malick retrospectively reverses the colonial logic; he shows how the colonists are the "savages" and how the Indians were the civilized people. The colonists emerge as cannibals. Instead of listening to nature and learning to feed themselves on the new fruits of the earth, they are obsessed with searching for gold. While starving to death, they cannot resist the gold rush. Involuntarily, they conjure up images of Nibelheim, of Alberich's and Wotan's violation of nature and Wagner's critique of raw 19th-century capitalism and the industrial revolution in general. The only positive character is Rolfe as the settler who learns to listen to the Native American art of growing tobacco. In the other hand there is the folly of the first settlers. The first thing that happens when the Europeans set foot in Jamestown is the organization of an execution. The first to open fire on the Indians are the settlers. They teach the Indians what gunpowder is. They invoke their Christian faith to label the others, the strangers, as dangerous and uncivilized devils who deserve to be sent to the depths of hell. But what Christian goodness ought to be, we now find in the princess. She brings food to the fort in the middle of the harsh winter so that the surviving strangers can get through the winter. But from that goodness they draw no lessons.
De Bleeckere : "The philosophical critique that emanates from The New World to contemporary American civilization cannot be underestimated. Malick shows that the foundation of the United States is not primarily democracy, as proclaimed in The Declaration of Independence. The inability of white, European settlers to meet other cultures in mutual respect and enrichment -relationship Princess-Smith, relationship Rebecca-Rolfe - is the foundation of a civilization that still bears witness to the same impossibility. The New World emerges from a philosophical vision that promotes the other culture, the Native American, as a teacher. This teacher takes shape in the natural figures of the sun and mother earth, metaphorically condensed in the flowing water and the tall trees whose crown reaches to the sky and whose roots are anchored in the depths of the earth. The Native American teacher says, Man, listen to your Mother. The blinding gold fever still rages on in the souls of many of the heirs of the colonial Europeans who landed in Jamestown 400 years ago. As a result, they still suffer from a bad form of spiritual blindness, notwithstanding their loud profession of the Christian faith." In Malick's vision, the dream of a New World lies much more in the future than in the past. As in Wagner's Götterdämmerung.
It should be clear from the above that Malick also wanted to connect his film thematically with Wagner's Ring: the main correspondence is the exile of the daughter by the father after she hurls herself between her father and Smith to save his life. Later, like a "zu neuen Taten"-Siegfried Smith will bid farewell to his Brünnhilde. Finally, there is also the remarkable character of Rolfe who, like a true King Marke, is capable of renouncing his conjugal love.
Soundtrack
James Horner was initially recruited as composer of the film score. Horner's themes are often very beautiful but have minimal development. Malick was not satisfied with the result and substituted much of Horner's music with music by Wagner and Mozart (adagio from Piano Concerto No. 23). On three occasions the prelude to Das Rheingold can be heard. The first time (duration : 6m 9s) at the very beginning, immediately after the opening credits [00:03]. It shows underwater images of three naked Indian girls. As they swim, they reach out to each other, thus referring rather explicitly to the Rhinemaidens, to nature in its pristine state, to the Wagnerian notion of the "reinmenschliche" that will be associated with the culture of the Indians throughout the film. The second quotation (duration: 5 m 47s) occurs midway through the film [00:48]. It accompanies the princess' surrender to her infatuation with Smith. While the first two quotations of Wagner's prelude musically support nature and love, the third (duration 4 m 20 sec) constitutes a kind of counterpoint [02:44]. It also marks the end of the film. It shows the princess in a strictly geometric English garden playing with her infant son, after saying goodbye to John Smith and settling into her "new world" with Rolfe while the voiceover says, "Mother now I know where you live." This is followed in rapid succession by the account of her death. The repetition of the Rheingold prelude thus reflects Pocahontas' own experience of transformation, while also connecting the beginning, middle and end of the film. Halfway through, another fragment of the Einzug der Götter (duration : 1m 21s) [01:19] can be heard, marking the climax of Pocahontas' infatuation. The performance of the Wagner excerpts rested with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra.
DVD
Under pressure from Warner Brothers, Malick had to shorten the film to 135 minutes. That is also the length of the original 2006 DVD release. Three years later, Warner Brothers released an Extended Cut that contained previously unseen material and is 172 minutes long. This is obviously the version to watch.
Film sheet
US / 2005-2008 /135' - 172' (Extended Cut) / Direction and screenplay: Terrence Malick / Production: Sarah Green / Photography: Emmanuel Lubezki / Editing: Richard Chew, Hank Corwin, Saar Klein, Mark Yoshikawa / Production design: Jack Fish / Music: James Horner / Characters: John Smith (Colin Farrell), Princess / Rebecca (Q'Orianka Kilcher), John Rolfe (Christian Bale), Christopher Newport (Christopher Plumer), Powhatan (August Schellenberg), Opechancanough (Wes Studi), Argall (Yorick van Wageningen), Wingfield (David Thewlis), King James I (Jonathan Price), Queen Anne (Alexandra Malick).