Why Does The Earth Have Colours?

With The Tree Of Life proving to be the most anticipated title of (insert any year from 2009 to 2056), I thought I may as well have me a little Terrence Malick fest. And a little fest it shall be - this is my second on here after Days Of Heaven, and that takes me to half of his released filmography as director. And I saw The Thin Red Line years ago, though I think I'll hit it up again. Leaving only Badlands to go.


So, which title could I possibly be talking about here? Well, considering there are so many to choose from, I'm going to stab and say The New World. Bullseye.

Pretty, huh? I don't normally find Colin pretty. But here? Pretty.

Considering the enormous gaps that can happen between Malick's films, and the fact that they are generally very good, the weight of expectation heaped on them can, I think, often be excessive. I think he fell prey to this weight with this, his fourth film. The reviews, when they came out, were decidedly mixed, though it's also worth remembering that the original version shown to critics is altered (and by a solid fifteen minutes of runtime, not to mention how the remaining footage might then have been changed) from that which was eventually released in cinemas. I personally loved the film, and I did go in with the expectation (there's that word again) that I would be quite disappointed, or at the very least underwhelmed. So there you go.


Malick, with his fourth film, tackles the founding of Jamestown, Virginia, incorporating the tale of Pocahontas (Q'orianka Kilcher) and John Smith (Colin Farrell.) I must confess, I know absolutely nothing of this tale. I've never seen the animation, and I never studied much American history. If, prior to my watching this film, you had asked me who Pocahontas was, I would have been able to tell you that she was the main character in a Disney film and not much else. This may have made the whole thing fresher and therefore more easily digestible for me - perhaps those with fond recollections of the previous treatment of this legend do not appreciate Malick's wistful and sometimes scandalous, as well as somewhat mythically adapted retelling.


In a similar way to Days of Heaven, The New World doesn't attempt to engage the viewer through a true and dramatic narrative. Rather, it is again a film you feel your way through, you see your way through, rather than following the narrative checkpoints and emotional and character arcs. Malick's floating and drifting camera (masterfully utilised by the incredible Emmanuel Lubezki, who I will say again is criminally underrated, mentioned again here and here) seem to not lead the way through the jungle of the period, but rather happen upon important moments that allow you to piece together what is happening. It's almost like he's drifting about with a camera, shooting the sky, and every now and then he loses focus and the camera falls to the level of us mere mortals, and we happen to notice something important happening before the fascination returns to something beautiful near the tree tops, or in the reeds. But what you see is always so wonderfully informed, and matched by a fragmented yet touching voiceover that lets you totally inhabit the new and unknown world our characters are inhabiting.


The highs and lows of the Smith/Pocahontas relationship are mapped alongside the horrendous conditions surrounding the foundation of the town. Kilcher was oft talked about for Oscar, though she didn't really manage to pull through with anything particularly major despite a fantastic performance. But then again, no actor has ever managed an Oscar nod through Malick. Farrell wasn't even mentioned except in passing from what I remember, though he gives quite a solid performance. His role isn't overly dramatic, but it is always there and full of meaning - I think he pulled off a much bigger performance than he is given credit for. He has a lost and confused look in his eyes betraying the fear and discomfort he feels in the space he finds himself in. He is not a confident and fearless leader, he is in love but he is scared shitless, and he gives me all of that even whilst doing very little.


The cinematography was marvelous. Did I already mention that? Won't someone please clone Emmanuel Lubezki, raise one copy on a pedestal for all to admire and set the rest to work shooting every film they can? Please? Thanks.


The supports were all good as well, and I did really like seeing Ben Mendelsohn. I like seeing Ben. He's very good, you know. And, wait for it, a Christian Bale role that I liked. Another one! That's two Bale films in a row! (Though made many, many years apart...) I thought he was magnificently understated and very controlled, and very warm, very real. And those are not words I generally associate with Mr Bale. I was très impressed. Impressed enough to use French, no less.


James Horner's score, or what was left of it by the time Malick kept cutting and changing and cutting and changing, was really very good, and I'm not a huge fan of James Horner scores as a general rule. So that was nice.


I really liked the film. I might even go so far as to say loved. I did at the beginning, so why hold back here. It was a beautiful, moody look at history. It may not have been true, but who cares! It was touching, it was stunning, it was moving, and it kept me watching every second. 5 stars.

What Kind Of Friend Is Always Hiding?

My love for Y Tu Mamá También is not a secret (look here and here), and as it kept popping up in those best of the 00s lists I had a craving to see it again. Plus, I think one film with Gael García Bernal is never enough.

By the time También came around, director Alfonso Cuarón had already helmed one Hollywood production: the moderately successful Great Expectations three years earlier. He has obviously since returned to Hollywood (or at least English-language productions) with the third Harry Potter installment and Children of Men. In fact, maybe the surprising thing is that he hasn't returned to Mexico, after También broke opening weekend box office records there.


This film, probably more so than Amores Perros, made Bernal known around the world (probably because he keeps getting nekked in it - how unfortunate...) Indeed, it is still his third highest grossing film at the US box office after the Brad Pitt/Cate Blanchett helmed Babel and the wildly acclaimed The Motorcycle Diaries. In También, Bernal plays Julio, young, and best friends with Tenoch (Diego Luna, who hasn't done too badly out of the film himself, though I believe he was the bigger star in Mexico going into production.) The pair meet the wife of Tenoch's cousin Luisa (Maribel Verdú), fresh in Mexico from Spain, at Tenoch's sister's wedding, where they inform them of their just-hatched plan to go to a beautiful, pristine beach known as Heaven's Mouth in the coming days, inviting her along with them.


Luisa shortly receives a call from her husband, away on business, informing her of his infidelity, and she phones Tenoch to take him up on the boys' offer. After madly trying to find a place that could pass as the fictional Heaven's Mouth, the boys pick Luisa up and they start off on their road trip, each dreaming of bedding the beauty.


The trip begins benignly enough, but quickly descends into fighting, aggravation, hatred, confessions of indiscretions with the others' girlfriends, and out and out hostility. Luisa gives up on them both, storming off on a deserted road, but they convince her to get back in the car on the condition that they give up on arguing and accept that what she says goes.

Because one picture is TOTALLY not enough.

Finally, they miraculously stumble across a perfect beach, and quickly all animosity seems to resolve itself, until the aftermath of their final night...


The film is an incredible study of friendship and of how it can go awry. A grown-up road trip about teenagers, it dares to mine emotional territory that so many other films of this ilk coming out of the studio system would never dream to go near. Sexuality in all its forms, death, drugs - it's all there for the taking. These two friends, with Luisa in the middle, who until then thought they knew everything about each other quickly come to realise that for two people from opposite sides of the proverbial track (Tenoch being rich, Julio being poor) there will almost always be things that the other can't understand. But beyond that, regardless of their class differences, there are so many things that human nature will dictate regardless. Jealousy and the havoc it can wreak on an otherwise unassailable bond is in the foreground here.


Luisa, nursing a secret, serves as a means to an end. By being older and wiser, she draws from them an attempt to prove themselves capable of understanding and relating to her, despite the attempts of the other to cut them down in a childish display of immaturity - whether lighthearted or not. Her willingness to surrender herself to the charms of the boys may seem initially cruel of her, like she is taking advantage of them to gain her own revenge, but when her secret comes out as the final scene of the film plays out you realise that she is not. Or if she is taking advantage of them, it is not from malevolence or vengeance or anything approaching it. She is as much a victim of the world they are all inhabiting as Julio and Tenoch.

How much do you want to be Maribel Verdú? About 4000 muches.

Bernal and Luna are superb in their roles. Every second of their friendship reeks achingly true, whether they are sharing a joint or screaming at each other. Verdú wonderfully inhabits Luisa, carrying off brevity when her face needs to be brave but rendering her heartache in private without a moment of artifice. Cuarón draws out the story, with a voiceover digressional narrative that could almost be out of place were its revelations not so beautiful and poignant, and plants you right in that car with them. The hand held camerawork from the CRIMINALLY UNDERRATED (you heard it here first... or at least most recently) Emmanuel Lubezki means that you actually are right there in the car with them, or at least running alongside.


Truly, nothing puts a foot wrong. The entirely diegetic score is not often there but always pitch-perfect, the crafting of the film (from editing to various on- and off-screen design elements) is spot on. 


It's rare, I think, that a film on the surface so light but underneath so deep comes along and plays like this one. The beauty and youthfulness holds hands and skips strongly along with the darker coming of age themes of the age of the boys and the secret of Luisa. It's 5 stars all the way, and after writing this I kind of want to go and watch it again.

Just Don't Think About It.

Children Of Men is a film that I really, really wanted to see when it was out in cinemas. It had good reviews, I love the director, I love Julianne Moore, it looked interesting, the word of mouth I heard was great. Even though I've never been a huge Clive Owen fan, I wanted to see it, and it's always remained high on my list, though for some reason I never got around to seeing it.



Interestingly, director Alfonso Cuarón is also my primary reason for, one day, wanting to watch the Harry Potter series. But that's for another time (probably when I've actually sat down and done it, all for his third installment.) All that needs to be noted here is that I remember liking how Great Expectations played out more than I ultimately liked the movie as a whole, and that Y Tu Mamá También is one of my favourite movies of all time (and caused the future husband ranking of Gael García Bernal.)

Children Of Men is a truly different beast to También, however. It's almost post-apocalyptic, or, if you count the sudden infertility of all of the world's women as an apocalypse, which I guess it would be, though not in the traditional sense, it is probably the best post-apocalyptic film I've ever seen. It completely avoids the trappings of most films that would fit this ilk - that is, it looks like today. Only with a hell of a lot of despair.

Owen plays Theo Faron. Just a man. Working a job he hates in a world he hates, with only two people around him he doesn't hate: Jasper (Michael Caine) and his very ill wife. He was, however, married once to a woman named Julian (Moore), who is now a radical leader living as a refugee on the loose in Britain after the country closed its borders to all foreigners (she is American.) When Julian gets back in touch after twenty years, shortly after the death of the world's youngest person (who was eighteen at the time), Theo finds himself trying to deliver the young, miraculously pregnant Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey) to a mysterious organisation called The Human Project - presumably these people want to work out why Kee is pregnant and how they can then cure the infertility problem.

It's a political allegory for a large part. It talks of the problems of closed borders in desperate times (really, what use does it have here?), of discrimination, of secrecy... of all of those things the world at large doesn't really like. Bombs go off in cafes in apparent terrorist attacks (but do we sympathise with them? I think we might...) much like today, and the film is not that far in the future - 18 years, if my memory serves me, as the youngest person alive, who as mentioned dies, was born in 2009, again memory permitting.

Something about those Mexican directors and the way they direct with handheld cameras - I don't think anyone can do it as well as they can. And Cuarón is one of the best. And then eliciting those performances. Owen is superbly gruff and hostile (and that's from a non-fan, remember), Moore is right on key with her matter-of-fact determination, Caine (someone else I'm not normally a huge fan of) plays the stoner geezer very well, while Ashitey puts in a star-making turn as the young woman on the run from any number of organisations. Support from such as my beloved Charlie Hunnam (looking virtually unrecognisable) and the fabulously unknown Jacek Koman (he's pretty well-known in Australia, but I don't imagine much outside of it) round it out. It's a truly terrific assemblage of quality actors putting in fantastic performances.

Lensing by the criminally underrated Emmanuel Lubezki (who has done, among others, The New World and Ali) is astonishing, creating an obvious UK and, particularly, London we all know and love, but one so hideously grimy and blighted by the effects of the tumultuous time these people are living in. In a just world his name would be as well known in living rooms as any of the best-known cinematographers out there. (I do know that the vast majority of people in this world would have no idea as to the name of a single cinematographer, but you get my point.)

Score is great. Design is phen.om.en.al. Everything comes together. It's terrific. It's 5 stars again. Wow, doling my stars out like candy at the moment!