The New New World revisited.

You've seen a recent tendency here to round up reviews of films of particular interest into entries of their own, films that seem significant for one reason or another. Mostly, though, that significance doesn't inspire much more than a spate of approving or disapproving reviews and the occasional think piece - good reading, but something very different than what The New World is sparking at the moment: serious discussion throughout a wide-ranging network of blogs. Conversations that last a while, which can be unusual for blogs.

There are no ringleaders or moderators of such blog-to-blog or comment area discussions, but there can be particularly active nodes, and in this case, one is most certainly Matt Zoller Seitz. On Wednesday, he wrote fifth entry on the film at his still-new The House Next Door:

The New World is a new watermark. It is a $50 million epic poem made with Time Warner's money; it is a an American creation myth that recontextualizes our past, present and future as fable, as opera, as verse. It is this era's 2001: A Space Odyssey - a musical-philosophical-pictorial charting of history's slipstream and the individual's role within it.

It is nothing less than a generation-defining event.

And for the fifth time, he's kicked up some meaty commentary, drawing in fellow critics and a filmmaker or two.

In the meantime, his fellow New York Press critic, Armond White, doesn't share quite as much enthusiasm, but he is more or less on the same page: "It is [Terrence] Malick's rebuke to artful cynicism, re-imagining - and re-editing - history with grace."

The Telegraph's Tim Robey: "At the end, you emerge as if from a dream - a sublime and desperately sad one - and a large part of the sadness is that it's over." Some background.

Michael Atkinson in the Voice: "But the trims are targeted only at the restless: Malick's movie is essentially intact, and though run through with misjudgments (the voiceover ellipses from The Thin Red Line are still overused and mawkish) it remains a beatific, fabulously Rousseauian experience."

David Lowery: "The New World is triumph of cinematography and performance, of sound and picture, but it's in the cutting that Malick has truly achieved that lofty poetic function, and it is the cutting one must study to truly get to the heart of the film."

Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian: "Malick has a pure, fluent cinematic idiom; his expedition into the past is ambitious and glorious."

Paul Matwychuk in Vue Weekly: "I couldn't wait for Malick to conclude his opening montage and begin telling his story—probably the most legendary, mythic love story in American history. The crazy thing is, though, the montage never really ends."

Donna Bowman in the Nashville Scene: "Cinephiles will be left enraptured by the two new faces of Malick - humane and architectural on display."

In the Times of London, James Christopher reminds us that this "hypnotic piece of art... can be truly appreciated only on a big screen." And Kevin Maher meets Q'Orianka Kilcher.

But Joshua Gibson's having none of it, writing at Fagistan: "I know a lot of people like this movie, and really I can't begrudge that. It's about a kajillion times the film Brokeback Mountain is, and it's nice to see a movie like this being made at all, even it's not that good. But I'm beginning to think I saw an entirely different film than anyone else."

Posted by dwhudson at January 29, 2006 4:52 PM