Representation of culture through film is one of the main venues people use to obtain knowledge of other cultures. Unfortunately, some films do not do a great job of representing their chosen culture accurately. Terrence Malick’s film "The New World" (Malick 2005) is unique in its accurate portrayal of the culture of the Powhatan Native American tribe and the founding of Jamestown in the early 1600s. Malick vastly researched the Powhatan and English cultures of the time, and even met with linguists in order to re-create the long-dead Algonquian langue for the film. Through his painstaking accuracy, Malick shatters the misconception that the Native American lifestyle is somehow inferior to the English or modern American lifestyle, and does so while creating a beautiful story of love and humanity.
The plot of "The New World" is one that is well known. The film is based on the colonization of Jamestown, Virginia following the meeting of the English and Powhatan tribe, including the love story between John Smith (Collin Farrell) and Pocahontas (Q’orianka Kilcher). "The New World" begins as three ships dock on American soil near the Powhatan tribe. As the two peoples meet, tension arises due to barriers in communication and culture. Pocahontas acts as a translator between the English and the Powhatan tribe, and she eventually falls in love with John Smith despite their cultural differences and the fact that he is a prisoner. Smith becomes submerged in the Powhatan culture, and begins to love his new way of life. Smith even describes returning to the English settlement from the ‘Naturals’ village as being woken from a dream. Against Smith’s better judgment, Smith takes an offer from the king to lead his own expedition exploring the East Indies, and leaves Pocahontas thinking that he is dead. From there, Pocahontas marries an Englishman named John Rolfe and she is submerged into the English way of life. This includes becoming a baptized Christian and receiving an English education, which is reflective of the time John Smith spent with her people.
After some time, Pocahontas learns that Smith is alive, and decides to travel to London to see him, though their reunion is short-lived because they both have changed so much. Acknowledging that their affair is over, the two part ways and Pocahontas accepts what her life will be with Rolfe and her children. Unfortunately, the film ends when Pocahontas contracts pneumonia in London and dies, though because of the peace she found at the end of her life, Pocahontas’s death leaves the film with a positive and hopeful tone.
The subject of colonization of native peoples has been shown on screen many times in the past, though Malick attempts to differentiate "The New World" from other films by representing native culture in an accurate, and more importantly, a positive light. Malick’s goal is to show that the two cultures share more similarity than one would think, and that the Powhatan way of life is not inferior to the English way of life. Although there are times when the peoples are wary of trusting each other due to cultural differences, and the interaction between the two may not end on a positive note, the audience gets the feeling that the two cultures’ share a likeness in their humanity.
Malick wanted to portray the English as people who were fleeing an unjust government, not ruthless imperialists like some people believe they are. He also wanted to show that the Powhatan way of life was much more advanced than people give it credit for. The Powhatans had advanced economic trading systems. They had well-developed religion and they had even made more advances in women’s rights than the English had at the time, which is significant to me because it proves the validity of the Native American way of life. Women had vastly more freedom in Native American societies compared to the English. The elder women had a say in politics and women were allowed to choose their husband. Women were also allowed to have extramarital relationships as long as they were not married to a chief. Since colonists started assimilating the Natives, their way of life has been dwindling. This is why it is important for their culture to be represented accurately in film. If the media does not portray them accurately, the public will most likely not know about the Powhatan’s rich and advanced culture. I think this is why Malick took on the story of Jamestown and the Powhatans: because he realized there is not enough accurate representation of Native Americans in the media.
Malick also strives to show the perspectives of both cultures during the vital merging period in which the plot takes place. The film goes to great lengths to show both the perspective of the explorers and the perspective of the indigenous people, as both are experiencing equally “new worlds” due to the cultural merge. In her article “Historical Realism and Imperialist Nostalgia in Terrence Malick’s The New World,” Monika Seibert states, “indigenous and European points of view are given roughly equal time and space during the film's opening sequences, and this balancing continues throughout the film as Malick's classic voiceovers constantly shift among settler and native protagonists” (Siebert 146). It is easy to take the historical events from "The New World" and make a clear protagonist/antagonist out of the opposing cultures, but Malick shows the perspectives of both peoples in order for the audience to get a secular view of the situation and the motivations of specific characters as well as their overarching culture. This can be shown through both John Smith and Pocahontas merging into each other’s cultures, and actually finding happiness in their new way of life.
Malick and his crew went to staggering lengths to create "The New World" in a way that realistically portrays the Powhatan people that lived in Jamestown in the early 1600s. Seibert continues to state, “In a marked departure from the historical representations of American Indians on film, the crew is dedicated to depicting the Algonquian people of early Virginia, rather than generic Indians” (Seibert 153). The most difficult task that they took on was to re-create the Algonquian language. According to Blair Rudes in her article “Giving Voice to Powhatan’s People: The Creation of Virginia Algonquian Dialogue for "The New World," Malick decided that the Powhatan actors in his film should speak the actual Algonquian language and that “their task was not an easy one if for no other reason than the fact that no one had spoken the Virginia Algonquian language since sometime in the middle of the nineteenth century” (Rudes 30). Because of this, a handful of linguists were hired to resurrect the language specifically for the purpose of the film.
This information alone proves that Malick truly cared about portraying the Powhatan tribe and the events that took place during the founding of Jamestown accurately. Due to the fact that the Algonquian language has not been spoken for years, it is unlikely that anyone would have noticed if Malick’s crew had just made up a language; but because Malick cares about the representation of an advanced and distinguished culture, he went to these extreme lengths to do so. In addition to this painstaking task, the set of the film was made to accurately recreate life in Jamestown in the 1600s. Seibert acknowledges that “filming takes place only 10 miles from the original location of the settlement and that Werowocomoco and Fort James are reconstructed with exclusively local materials” (Seibert 154). The use of local materials and original filming location is hard to accomplish in the film industry due to regulations or ownership of land. Often filmmakers have to substitute a similar looking location to the location of the plot because of these filming restrictions. Also, constructing the set from local materials must have been a difficult task, but one that made an enormous impact on the accuracy of representation within "The New World."
With all of this information combined, it is undeniable that Terrence Malick cared deeply about accurately representing the Powhatan and English people in his 2005 film. There seems to be a problem of representation of other cultures in our media, and filmmakers like Malick are making strides to bring representation of other cultures to the forefront of American media.
