I had waited a long time for the chance to see each of the films. The wait for Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger (1975) was partly imposed on me by the film’s star, my personal hero Jack Nicholson, who selfishly sat on the Italian auteur’s masterpiece for decades but rereleased it in cinemas last year. But, as with the other film, Terrence Malick’s The New World (2005), The Passenger forced my cineaste mouth to water longer than anticipated for an additional reason: it wasn’t released in UK cinemas. (I had to import the Region 1 disc.)
Actually, as far as The New World is concerned, that’s not quite true. It found its way onto a few screens in the UK. But, if I remember correctly, I was unable to catch it on its release in Birmingham because Cineworld’s one and only screening took place at 10.00am. Who do they imagine has the time or inclination to watch a film at that time of day?
The New World, which tells the Pocahontas story with considerably more passion than Disney’s 1995 pukefest, was directed by the genius behind Badlands (1973) and The Thin Red Line (1998). It is Malick’s third film in as many decades. Emmanuel Lubezki was Oscar-nominated for its cinematography, which in itself is worth the audience’s time and money.
The film did not receive a nod from the Academy in any other category. Many of those who watched it would have you believe that it is a boring film in which drama is scarce. This, supposedly, is why I was the only person in the auditorium, watching a film that I would not have seen at all had I not stumbled across it at a cinema in Sweden.
But I think the reason for The New World’s commercial failure is more that it is brave enough to be what it wants to be: all mood and tone, instead of being tailored to any easily defined market segment. It has action scenes, but not enough to satisfy Bruce Willis fans. It has romantic scenes, but not enough to satisfy Meg Ryan fans. There are no laugh-out-loud comedy moments for Jack Black fans. It looks, sounds and feels historically accurate, but there is not enough dialogue to stimulate commentary from historians.
Some films have something for everybody; The New World doesn’t at all, but it has a very special peaceful tone and it is a remarkable feast for the eyes. The same can be said – more so, in fact – of The Passenger, a film about a man who tries to escape the confines of being himself by assuming the identity of a newly croaked lookalike. Despite this intriguing premise, the film is in no hurry to weave any formulaic yarns, and instead allocates plenty of time for its delicious lingering shots of Spanish hills and Saharan dunes. The characters are almost incidental. The film isn’t even accompanied by music. It finishes on an ambiguous note, but while the viewer is invited, by all means, to interpret its final scene in any way he or she chooses, the real point of the film is its visual tone. And it’s beautiful.
The New World was written in – and is the precious residue of – the 1970s, the decade in which audiences’ taste for arty European films like The Passenger both grew and subsided. It is a shame that the zeitgeist that cultivated films like these is long gone. For now, there does not seem to be a significant audience for films where tone is valued over story. I hope that younger filmmakers like Sofia Coppola can succeed in showing us on a grander scale what we have been missing.
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