Terence Malick: The New World

[Chris Knipp]

I am not the lone dissenting voice in the world, nor am I someone who didn't "like" the film. I simply wrote a critical review of it, assessing its successes and failures, not an appreciation or eulogy. I'm glad Howard enjoys and loves The New World so much. I have a lot of time for Malick, in fact I'll bet i was the first one out to see the film, the first hour in the theater where it first opened to the public in New York. I didn't wait six months to see it. And it is beautiful. But by the end of it, a lot of its goals have not been achieved, even though the last few moments are magical. I don't want us to quote critics back and forth at each other, but as you probably know, there are critics who found shortcomings in it (its Metacritic rating is an average 69 with Dargis and Hoberman and Rosenbaum moving down the line from 80 down through 60 to 50), as well as some, like the eccentric Armond White of the New York Press, who called it a masterpiece. and would score it off the charts. I'm not a lone dissenting voice, but somewhere in the middle, just a little below Dargis.. Three or four is a too random sample. But I would not like to spoil it for anybody, so I'm not going to go over my ciriticisms or expand on them here..