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I saw it on a screen the size of a warehouse wall, boasting a state-of-the-art sound system that picked out every insect whirr and birdcall, every droplet of falling water, every muted sigh. I knew only that it was about Pocahontas and Captain John Smith, and was directed by the man who made Badlands, Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line. I saw the movie at 10 in the morning, on 20 minutes' notice. And, less often, by faintly hysterical accolades written too soon and in terms too overheated to convey understanding. The movie came and went within a month, and its critical reception was characterised for the most part by bafflement, condescension, lazy ridicule and outright hostility. The New World is a bottomless movie, almost unspeakably beautiful and formally harmonious. I'm one of them, and my fanaticism burns undimmed 30 or more viewings later. It's been said that The New World doesn't have fans: it has disciples and partisans and fanatics. And that film is The New World, Terrence Malick's American foundation myth, which arrived just as the decade reached its dismal halfway point, in January 2006. T his decade hasn't been up to much, movie-wise, but I am more than ever convinced that when every other scrap of celluloid from 2000-2009 has crumbled to dust, one film will remain, like some Ozymandias-like remnant of transient vanished glory in the desert.
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