The New World

Walked to the movies last night in the snow to see this. I really liked how verite it was. I've never even heard of the director: Terence Malick. It almost seemed like a documentary at points, it seemed so refreshingly free of Hollywood melodramatic bullshit. Especially in the scenes with natives ("naturals"as Captain Christopher Newport called them) seemed real and accurate. And the whole thing took me back repeatedly to the story of an exhibit project I worked on for 5 years: Carolina on the Horizon: Charles Towne Landing, about the first 10 years of the settlement of Charleston, SC, in 1670. I went into the film wondering if it would cover stuff I learned from that project, such as how "naturals" were captured by settlers, and shipped away to Barbados, the Indies, or whatever locale needed more slaves. We tend to think of kidnapping and slavery as something only Africans were made to take, but thousands of Native Americans were forcibly exported from here, before the ones who remained were pushed out. Anyhow, this is a powerful film, and I wish Malick would make 10 more increments, taking us all the way up to Andrew Jackson and the removal, and beyond.