The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Terrence Malick · a film · 2005 · scored on the general release of January 2006, about 135 minutes
Mode
Historical film made lyric; founding legend, love story and an account of encounter as seeing, in one drift
Mythos
Eden and the fall: a garden entered by strangers, a love inside it, the expulsion, a second life outside; the discovery inverted, and a death at the threshold of return
Phase
Virginia from May 1607, a winter among the Powhatan, the fort in famine, a baptism and a marriage, then England in 1616 and 1617; the narrating voice passes from Smith to Rolfe at the hinge
Presentation
Feature film in colour, 2.39:1, the general release of about 135 minutes; English and a reconstruction of Virginia Algonquian, unsubtitled at length; Emmanuel Lubezki’s natural light; Wagner and Mozart beside James Horner’s score
Register
From a girl dancing in the shallows to starving men in snow; whispered questions, few spoken lines, the camera at the height of the figures
Scale
Two worlds meeting at one river, two loves, and one life from the forest to Gravesend
Governing Proposition
In May 1607 three English ships come up a Virginia river. A captain taken by the Powhatan is spared at the intervention of a girl, and the two live a winter that the colony’s hunger ends; she is held at the fort, told he is dead, baptised, married to another Englishman and taken to England, where she dies. The wager of the film is that the founding legend of the United States can be rebuilt as Eden and the fall and told as perception rather than event, by a wandering camera and three interior voices, so that what the English called a new world is seen as a world they ended by arriving.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The film opens on water, in a girl’s voice. She is praying to a Mother, and the Mother, it becomes clear, is the land, the river and the light on it. Then the titles run over the prelude to Das Rheingold, the low chord that rises and goes on rising, and three English ships come up the river in May 1607. They are seen first from the shore, by the people who live there. Before the legend has begun, the film has stood where its audience has never been asked to stand, among those who watch the strangers arrive.
Landfall. John Smith, played by Colin Farrell, comes ashore in irons, and Captain Newport, played by Christopher Plummer, frees him. The colonists raise a fort at the water’s edge, in a forest that runs to the horizon; David Thewlis plays Wingfield. The film gives almost no exposition. It does not explain the Virginia Company or the charter, or who governs whom inside the fort; it shows men in armour among tall trees and lets the disproportion speak.
The film was written and directed by Terrence Malick, produced by Sarah Green, photographed by Emmanuel Lubezki and designed by Jack Fisk, with an original score by James Horner beside which the prelude to Das Rheingold and the slow movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 carry the largest passages; New Line Cinema distributed it. A version of about 150 minutes opened in a limited release at the end of December 2005 and was withdrawn. Malick recut it to about 135 minutes for the general release of January 2006, and that is the film judged here, the version in which the film went out to the world. An extended cut of about 172 minutes followed on home video in 2008. The method is set in the first minutes and kept to the last: little speech, three interior voices, and a camera that moves at the height of the people it watches.
Movement II
Smith goes upriver and is taken. He walks through grass taller than he is into a village that receives him. Its chief is Powhatan, played by August Schellenberg; Wes Studi plays Opechancanough. Smith is about to be killed when a girl intervenes, and he is spared. The rescue at the centre of the legend is over in a few seconds. The film is not interested in the act as an event; it is interested in what the two people who meet in it then see.
The winter among the Powhatan is the film’s paradise. Smith and the girl teach each other words, one word given for another. She dances in the shallows and on the meadow, and Lubezki’s camera moves with her. Smith sheds the armour he came in. His voice turns on the hope of beginning again, and the land and the girl are one chance to him. Q’orianka Kilcher, fourteen when it was shot, plays the girl with movement and face more than speech, and she carries the film from this point to its end. The credits call her Pocahontas; the film does not name her at all.
The village is seen as Eden more than it is entered. Its politics are a council and a few faces, its labour a glimpse; the film gives the Powhatan world the light of a garden and the shape of one. That is its design, and its limit. The founding legend of the nation is being rebuilt as the oldest story of a garden, a garden entered by strangers with a love inside it, and the film knows the expulsion is coming before either of its lovers does.
Movement III
Smith returns to Jamestown and finds it starving. Snow lies on the fort and on the men inside it, who are dying of hunger and turning on each other; there is mutiny. The girl comes to the fort with food for the men who will later hold her. The film shows the famine in images of cold and want, but the violence of the colony comes as weather comes, felt and not explained, and the fighting that follows is cut to fragments and confused in space.
Her father banishes her. She is taken and held at the fort. Smith is sent away on an expedition, and the word is given to her that he is dead. This is the turn on which the rest depends, and the film passes through it in ellipsis, so briefly that cause is lost: how the hostage came to be held, how she passed from captive to convert, is shown in fragments that do not say. Farrell’s Smith is opaque where the film most needs to see him choose, and when he goes the film does not let us see how far he chose it.
Here, at the hinge, the voice changes. The first half has been Smith’s and the girl’s; the second will be hers and another man’s. The change is the film’s change of love made into form, and it falls at the hinge between the film’s two halves. What comes before is an encounter, rapture and its end; what comes after is a life, lived in the world the encounter made.
Movement IV
She is baptised and given a name, Rebecca, after a film in which she has had none. She puts on English dress for the first time. John Rolfe, played by Christian Bale, courts her, and his voice now speaks beside hers. They marry, a field is planted, there is tobacco, and a son is born. The film touches each of these lightly, as stations of a life rather than as events.
Rolfe’s love is the second truth the film tells. Smith loved her as he loved the land, as a chance of beginning again, and left both when the chance became a life. Rolfe offers less rapture and more substance: a love that accepts a person already changed. Bale plays him in restraint, and the restraint is exact. The film shows what each love could hold, and what each could not.
In 1616 Rolfe takes her and their son to England. She is received at the English court. She walks in formal gardens, clipped and symmetrical after the forest, and looks at a caged animal. Lubezki frames England in symmetries the forest never had, and the girl looks at it with the gaze the English turned on Virginia. The discovery has been inverted, and in the reversal the film says what that gaze was.
Movement V
In England she meets Smith a last time. He is alive, and what was between them is not taken up again. She chooses Rolfe, and the choice is the end of the first life and the acceptance of the second. The world in which she and Smith met no longer exists for either of them, and the film lets the meeting show it without explaining it.
Her last walk is in an English garden with her son, the camera moving with them as it moved with her in the meadow. Then she dies at Gravesend, at the threshold of the voyage home. Rolfe writes to their son of her, and the film lets his letter close her life. The pattern completes itself: a discovery inverted, and a death at the edge of return.
The coda goes back to the river, under the prelude to Das Rheingold again, rising over trees and water. What Malick made is a historical film with the history almost cut away: an account of meeting as seeing, of a world the newcomers ended by arriving, and of a girl who looked at two worlds with the same wonder and could keep neither. The costs are real. The middle is told too briefly to be known, the colony’s brutality is softened into the same lyric key as the meadow, and the Powhatan are seen more than opened. The gain is a film elevated across two hours, built from a debased legend into the shape of Eden and the fall.
Act III · The Twelve
The large parts are required. The arrival is the premise, the captivity and reprieve the bond, the winter among the Powhatan the paradise that the famine ends, the false word of Smith’s death the breach, and Rolfe and England the second life the first could not become. But inside the phases the subtractive test finds real give, and it holds the axis lowest. Shots of grass, water, sky and hands are often interchangeable, and some recur past what they carry; the voices return to the same questions; the hostage-taking and the girl’s passage into English life are elliptical to the point that cause is lost. Heaviest of all, two versions released within a month, each defensible, show that whole passages can be moved or removed and the film remain itself: much is placed rather than required.
Score: 7.9 / 10
The disclosure can be stated: the meeting of two worlds is lived on each side as a vision of the other, and the vision cannot survive the history it begins; what the English call a new world is a world they end by arriving. The two loves add a second truth. Smith loves the girl as he loves the land, as a chance of beginning again, and leaves both when the chance becomes a life; Rolfe offers less rapture and more substance, a love that accepts a person already changed. Image gives a third: in England the girl looks at hedged gardens and a caged animal as the English looked at Virginia. Held well below the gate, because much of the power is wonder, a mood, and the Powhatan world is seen as Eden more than opened.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Elevation is the film’s ground, and it recurs in distinct summits: the ships coming upriver under the prelude to Das Rheingold, seen first from the shore; Smith walking through grass taller than he is into a village that receives him; the girl dancing in the shallows and on the meadow; snow on the fort and the starving men; the clipped English gardens after the forest; her last walk in a garden with her son; the river again under the prelude. Lubezki’s moving camera holds the pitch across two hours. The costs are weighed in full: rapture that never lowers loses contrast, so the frequency the axis credits is also its limit; some passages are lifted by Wagner and Mozart more than by the image; and the famine and fighting never reach the dread the wonder needs as counterweight.
Score: 8.8 / 10
Myth built, and built from a myth the culture already held in a debased form. The founding legend of the United States, the native princess who saves the captain, is rebuilt as Eden and the fall: a garden entered by strangers, a love inside it, the expulsion when the colony’s hunger reaches the village, a second life outside the garden. The girl’s prayers to a Mother who is the land make the sacred a structure, not an ornament, and the voyage to England completes the pattern as a discovery inverted and a death at the threshold of return. The particular stays particular: a copper kettle, a dress, a word given for a word. Held below the top because the Eden frame is inherited from the colonial writing the film criticises, and the girl is at times more emblem of the land than person.
Score: 8.7 / 10
The inheritance is the historical epic and the film of national founding. The departure is large: a historical film with almost no exposition, built from ellipsis, interior voice and a camera that drifts rather than covers; dialogue thin and often withheld; the native language unsubtitled at length; battle and politics cut to fragments; the rescue at the centre of the legend over in a few seconds. The stake was real: a studio picture with stars, opened in December for the awards season to mixed reviews and recut within weeks. Held below the gate because much of the turn was its maker’s already. The whispered interior chorus, nature cut against violence and the rapture of light were made in The Thin Red Line (1998), and the wager extends a path the same hand had proved.
Score: 8.4 / 10
The form carries the knowledge. Told in scenes and dialogue the story is a costume romance with a historical ending; told as perception, through a camera that wanders and voices that ask rather than state, it becomes an account of encounter as seeing. The change of narrator at the hinge, from Smith to Rolfe, is the change of love made formal, and England is framed in symmetries the forest never had, so the form registers exile. Two costs hold it well below the top. The elliptical form costs the film its middle: the passage from captive to Rebecca, on which the second half depends, is told too briefly to be known, so the form drops what its own story needs. And the shape was rebuilt between versions, so the macro-form is in part an arrangement of the knowledge rather than the knowledge itself.
Score: 8.5 / 10
It keeps yielding. The three voices answer one another across the film; the two gardens, Virginia’s and England’s, read differently on each return; the name withheld until baptism, the kettle, the armour Smith wears and sheds, the Mother addressed in prayer and the English queen all repay attention. The three versions make a further object of study, in what was added, moved and removed. The evidence is twenty-one years of rising attention, from a mixed reception to a central place in the writing on Malick. Held at the figure because the span is short, much of that writing concerns the director’s style rather than this film, and the meaning on first viewing is close to the meaning on the fifth: the well is deeper in image than in idea.
Score: 8.5 / 10
Released in 2005, so force and reach are scored together. The force: the film made the historical epic lyric, showing that a national founding could be told as perception and loss rather than as event. That is a real reorganisation of the historical film, discounted heavily because the grammar was its maker’s from The Thin Red Line and the new step, its transfer to a founding legend and a love story, is one of degree. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the natural-light frontier film after it, most openly The Revenant (2015), with the same cinematographer; the drift and whisper of much independent and festival cinema since; Malick’s own later films, The Tree of Life (2011) among them, built on this one’s method. Much of that reach runs through the style as a whole and through the earlier film, and this one alone did not redirect the field.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Weighed on form, presence and surface. The form survives whole in all three versions; nothing is lost, and restoration is repair only. Presence: twenty-one years, continuous on home video and in repertory, with a standing among critics that has risen from a mixed release; but a public presence that has stayed within the art house, narrow beside the most widely seen films of its years, and that holds the figure at the lower edge of what about twenty years can show. The surface dates little: a period setting and a style not fixed to 2005, though the star casting of the leads belongs to its moment. The several versions are no loss, but they leave the work less singular than a film with one form.
Score: 8.3 / 10
The making bears weight throughout. Emmanuel Lubezki photographs by natural light, the camera at the height of the figures, light through leaves and on water at every hour. Jack Fisk’s fort and village look made by hand and weather. Wind, birds, water and a low murmur of voices are mixed so that the voice-overs sit inside the world. Q’orianka Kilcher, fourteen when it was shot, carries the film by movement and face; Christian Bale’s Rolfe is exact in restraint. The costs are weighed in full. Colin Farrell’s Smith is opaque where the film needs to see him choose, and his voice-overs are flat, at the centre of the first half; James Horner’s score is largely displaced by borrowed music, and what remains is conventional; the fighting is confused in space; the cutting loses cause and time in the middle.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the girl dancing in a meadow in the first hour and the girl walking in a clipped English garden in the last. One law governs both, a gaze of wonder meeting a world it cannot keep. The English look at Virginia and the girl looks at England under that law, and the camera treats both alike, which is the film’s argument. The famine at the fort, the council of Powhatan, the baptism and the court obey it too, over a wide range: idyll, war, famine, court, deathbed. Held below the top because the law softens what does not fit it. The colony’s brutality and the war are drawn into the same lyric key and lose their weight, and the change of narrator, right in design, is less complete in tone than in structure.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Many orders in one structure: consciousness, in three interior voices; love, twice; the family, in a father who banishes a daughter and a mother who leaves a son; the state, in two polities, a chartered company and a crown; history, in the founding of a colony; the sacred, in prayer to a Mother and in baptism; and the natural order, which is the film’s ground. They are integrated: the girl’s two marriages, to the land and to an Englishman, are also the history of the land. Held lower because some orders are thin. Labour is a field planted and a fort built in passing; trade and its tobacco are glimpsed; Powhatan society is barely entered; the colony as politics is reduced to a few quarrels. Much is held, and much of it from the height of a single gaze.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.4 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Sublime at 8.8, then The Made, The Archetypal Deep and The Inner Law at 8.7. Elevation that recurs in distinct summits from the ships under the prelude to the river after her death, a making in which natural light, design and sound bear weight throughout, the founding legend rebuilt as Eden and the fall, and one law, a gaze of wonder meeting a world it cannot keep, governing the meadow and the English garden alike.
Limiting Dimension
The Inevitable at 7.9: the phases are required, but inside them shots of grass, water and sky are often interchangeable, the voices repeat their questions, the middle is elliptical to the point that cause is lost, and versions released within a month show how much is placed rather than required. Above it, Pressure on Tradition at 8.2: a grammar its maker had found before, and a reach that runs through his style as a whole. Then The Unconcealment, The Imperishable and The Encompassed at 8.3: wonder that is more mood than meaning and a Powhatan world seen as Eden; twenty-one years and a presence that has stayed within the art house; and orders held from the height of a single gaze.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.9 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 8.5, The Made at 8.7, The Inner Law at 8.7, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet: The Archetypal Deep at 8.7 clears the bar of 8.5, but The Swerve at 8.4, The Unconcealment at 8.3, The Imperishable at 8.3 and Pressure on Tradition at 8.2 fall short of it. The Universal Minimum is met: no axis falls below 7.9, against 7.5, and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 8.3. Four of the five summit conditions are met. The work is held below the summit by the Epochal Gate, on four of its five axes, and by its aggregate, 8.4 against the 9.0 that Tier V requires.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of The New World in its general release of January 2006, about 135 minutes, from the girl’s invocation over water to the river under the prelude to Das Rheingold: written and directed by Terrence Malick, produced by Sarah Green, photographed by Emmanuel Lubezki, designed by Jack Fisk, with an original score by James Horner, edited by Richard Chew, Hank Corwin, Saar Klein and Mark Yoshikawa, and distributed by New Line Cinema. No print, script or recording was consulted. The cut judged is Malick’s release cut, the one most audiences and most criticism met. The version of about 150 minutes that opened in a limited release at the end of December 2005 and was withdrawn differs from it mainly in length and in the placing of passages, and the extended cut of about 172 minutes issued on home video in 2008 is a variant; neither is judged, and their existence is cited only as evidence. The historical record of Jamestown, of Pocahontas and of John Smith’s own accounts is not part of the work, and nothing from it is imported. The Powhatan speech is a reconstruction of Virginia Algonquian; every axis is judged on the film as it was made, and the fidelity of the reconstruction is beyond this reading and neither credited nor charged. No line of dialogue or voice-over is held to the word with certainty, so none is quoted; the voices are described. The running times are the commonly given figures. Figures and details that could not be verified, among them the passages photographed on 65 mm, the credit for the language reconstruction, the English locations, the shot counts and timings, which passages belong to which version, the budget, the box-office returns and the film’s place in surveys of the century’s films, are not given.